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RELIGION AND MIRACLE 



RELIGION AND 
MIRACLE 



BY 




NLARGED EDITION 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

<$fce fiifcergitie j&re££ Cambntige 

1910 






COPYRIGHT, IOO9 AND 19IO, BY GEORGE A. GORDON 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

I 

Published October iqoq 
THIRD IMPRESSION 



©CLA2750! f 



^ * Hh ^ 

I dedicate this Book to the Inspiring 
Memory of my Father, George Gordon, 
of Insch, Scotland, — born and bred to 
the vocation of farmer : a brilliant mind, 
one of the bravest of men, to whom the 
order of summer and winter, seed-time 
and harvest was a token of the Infinite 
good-will, and who toiled in the Fields 
of Time in the sense of the Eternal. 

*" * * * 



NOTE 

This edition of " Religion and Miracle " 
differs in two respects, and in two respects 
only, from the original edition. It contains, 
at the proper place in the first chapter, a 
discussion of the nature of miracle, which 
when I first published my book seemed to 
me foreign to its purpose; but which, in 
view of widespread misapprehension, 1 now 
see to be essential. The second feature of 
this edition is an extended Introduction, in 
which I consider some of the greater interests 
and hopes of Christian thought. 

George A. Gordon. 

Old South Parsonage, Boston, 
June 1, 1910. 



PREFACE 

When a teacher and preacher of the Christian 
religion moves from the circumference toward 
the heart of faith, miracles fall out of the 
sphere of his vision. He may not deny the 
reality of miracles, but more and more mir- 
acles cease to be significant for him. He is 
dealing with the Eternal as it shines by its own 
light, and in that case outward witness of any 
kind for the things of the soul becomes super- 
fluous. For many years I have lived in this 
mood. Slowly miracles have ceased to serve 
me in the evolution of my belief, in the moral 
campaign of my spirit. For me the heart of 
the universe is God, the Eternal Spirit; the 
permanent force in man is the soul that an- 
swers to the Infinite soul; the incomparable 
genius of Christianity is in the way in which 
it enables human beings to live in the con- 
sciousness of our Father in Heaven. Christian- 
ity is, in my judgment, incomparable as the 



x PREFACE 

religion of revelation and reconciliation; it 
brings spirit to light, the Divine and the hu- 
man ; it brings peace. The words of the great 
prophet of the exile describe with rare felicity 
the privilege of the Christian preacher : " How 
beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of 
him that bringeth good tidings, that publish- 
eth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, 
that publisheth salvation ; that saith unto Zion, 
Thy God reigneth I'' 1 It is said of Christ : " He 
came and preached peace to you that were far 
off, and peace to them that were nigh : for 
through him we both have our access in one 
Spirit unto the Father." 2 For the great apostle 
to the nations the gospel became essentially 
one thing, the gospel of reconciliation. Into 
these divine depths in Christianity, the su- 
preme religion of the spirit, all devout and 
happy disciples of the Master and preachers 
of his message at length come. 

Sharing in this universal discipline of hon- 
est and advancing souls, it never occurred to 
me to write anything upon the subject of re- 

1 Isaiah lii, 7. 2 Epbesians ii, 17-18. 



PREFACE xi 

ligion and miracle. I had for many years 
dwelt in a sphere far removed from outward 
signs and wonders; I had, therefore, quietly 
ceased to regard the tradition of signs and 
wonders that accompanied the Lord. One day, 
however, I fell into conversation with a com- 
pany of young ministers ; I found them greatly 
troubled. They felt that as honest men they 
could not say that they believed in miracles ; 
and that incapacity created suspicion as to 
how much of the gospel remains when the 
miracles are set aside. 

This question I was invited to discuss at 
our Boston Ministers' Meeting two or three 
years ago, and the response which I then re- 
ceived, alike from men of conservative opin- 
ions and from men of radical views, led me to 
reconsider the whole subject. At the same 
time there came the invitation to lecture on 
the Nathaniel W. Taylor Foundation in Yale 
University. In this way the little volume now 
published came into existence. 

I am unwilling that any one who may look 
into this volume should fail to grasp my pur- 



xii PREFACE 

pose in writing it. I have no interest in the 
destruction of the belief in miracle. I am con- 
cerned to show that where miracle has ceased 
to be regarded as true, Christianity remains in 
its essence entire; that the fortune of religion 
is not to be identified with the fortune of 
miracle; that the message of Jesus Christ to 
the world is independent of miracle, lives by 
its own reality and worth, self -evidencing and 
self-attesting. If it shall be allowed by fair- 
minded men that I have made even a slight 
contribution toward the final emancipation of 
the fundamental beliefs of Christian men from 
the cycle of signs and wonders, and from the 
fate that with the advance of science seems to 
threaten the entire tradition of miracle, I shall 
be satisfied. I conceive myself to be a genuine 
conservative ; I am conscious that I work for 
the preservation of essential historic Christian- 
ity; I consider myself to be, to the extent of 
my power, a defender of the eternal gospel. 
1 regard the vision of God and of human ex- 
istence, embodied in the message and person 
of Jesus Christ, as the most precious posses- 






PREFACE xiii 

sion of mankind ; and I should be glad to 
make it impossible for those who are unable to 
agree with me in the discussion that follows 
to misunderstand me here. 

George A. Gordon. 

Old South Parsonage, Boston, 
June 19, 1909. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction: Things Worth While . . . xvii 

I. The Issue Defined . 1 

II. Belief in God and Miracle . . . ,81 

III. Jesus Christ and Miracle .... 119 

IV. The Christian Life and Miracle . . . 168 
V. An Eternal Gospel . . . • . 208 



INTRODUCTION 

THINGS WORTH WHILE 

I 

I here renew the expression of my unshaken 
confidence in the truth of the main contention 
of this book : that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is 
essentially independent of miracle ; that how- 
ever miracle may fare under the growing sense 
of natural law, Christianity in its essence is 
as lasting as the spirit of man and the moral 
being of God. While God lives in man and in 
the cosmos, it remains true that the super- 
natural pervades the natural as its superior 
and sovereign ; for the supernatural in the 
natural means that God is in the established 
sequences of his world, and that he is supreme. 
While few men of Christian faith care to 
deny the reality of miracle, while many recog- 
nize its logical possibility in the strict sense 
of the violation of natural law, while multi- 
tudes of good people sincerely believe in the 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

evangelical miracle, all wise thinkers are agreed 
that the miracle is relatively unimportant. 
This is my position. The miracle is rela- 
tively unimportant; as such, in all essential 
disputes it may be counted out or considered 
as incidental. The world of Christian faith 
does not stand or fall with miracle ; there- 
fore, whoever believes in miracle must hold it 
as the mere fringe of the garment of faith, 
and whoever ignores miracle or sets it aside 
may still be a profound believer in Christ and 
his gospel. Whoever reads with an open mind 
the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of First 
Corinthians will see that the distinction here 
made was of fundamental moment for Paul. 
Even among the higher forces of faith the 
apostle recognizes differing degrees of impor- 
tance. "But desire earnestly the greater gifts. 
And moreover a most excellent way show I 
unto you." 1 Then follows that tremendous 
judgment contained in the thirteenth chapter, 
upon all the forms of faith. Love is sovereign ; 
it alone "never faileth"; it gives worth to all 

1 1 Corinthians xii, 31. 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xix 

the other forces in the world of faith ; with- 
out love, that world is worthless. 

This principle seems to me of such moment 
for the Christian mind of to-day in its confu- 
sion of issues great and small, in its depend- 
ence upon sense and its feebleness in the 
august sphere of the soul, in its general con- 
dition of panic and superficiality, that I have 
determined to strengthen the argument of 
my book by an essay on the things that are 
really worth while in the world of religious 
belief. 

The first step into clearness in the bewil- 
dering total of the subjects of theological sci- 
ence would seem to be an agreement concern- 
ing the true perspective of faith. In some way 
or other the world of religious thought needs 
to be ordered in different degrees of worth. 
Some scheme involving a gradation of rank, 
valid for the religious human being, should 
be imposed upon the objects of religious con- 
cern. Relativity is the law of our being, — not 
the relativity which excludes, but that which 



xx INTRODUCTION 

is contained in the absolute, as the planet in 
infinite space ; and a deep and sure grasp of this 
law would seem to be of the utmost moment 
in theology. The story is told that Francis 
W. Newman, the radical, made a journey from 
London to Birmingham to discuss the pro- 
founder issues of religious belief with his 
brother, John Henry Newman, the Catholic ; 
and when the question arose as to the axiom 
from which debate should begin, the Catholic 
proposed to the radical as the surest principle 
of faith the infallibility of the Pope. This 
story has, if not literal, at least symbolic truth. 
It serves admirably as an illustration of Car- 
dinal Newman's sense of the perplexity and 
contradiction of his time, and his fine irony. 
It is almost needless to add that, while men 
are thus at variance concerning the relative 
security and value of the different interests of 
Christian faith, discussion can be nothing but 
a discipline in confusion. 

Doubtless it would be worth while to know 
everything that exists, whether as fact or force 
or idea, if one had mind enough and time 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxi 

enough for the task. We figure that in the 
Divine intellect all being and all phases of 
being find perfect reflection. We cannot, how- 
ever, bring ourselves to believe that even for 
the Divine intellect one thing is as important 
as another. It may be difficult, perhaps im- 
possible, to make out the perspective of values 
in the vision of God, but it can hardly be 
doubted that for him there exists some per- 
spective. Nothing is more impressive in the 
teaching of Jesus than his representation of 
the Eternal perspective : " Are not two spar- 
rows sold for a penny ? And not one of them 
shall fall on the ground without your Father. 
. . . Fear not therefore, ye are of more value 
than many sparrows." — " Consider the lilies 
of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, 
neither do they spin : and yet I say unto you, 
That even Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of these. But if God doth 
so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day 
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall 
he not much more clothe you, ye of little 
faith?" According to this teaching, while all 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

things are known to God, all things have not 
the same worth for God ; for him there is sub- 
stance and accident, essential and incidental, 
temporal and eternal. 

As matter of fact, perspective rules the lives 
of men. The world is shaped for each man 
according to his dominant interest. The chief 
object in the human landscape with the barber 
is the hair of his fellow-men, with the boot- 
black it is the feet. The special scholar is a 
person with a special perspective of values ; it 
may be Greek, classic, Hellenistic, ecclesiastic ; 
it may be Hebrew or Aramaic or Syriac, or any 
one of a large number of antique tongues ; it 
may be research in any one of a score of dif- 
ferent lines ; in each case the world is shaped 
into important and unimportant by the special 
interest. The elective system is grounded upon 
two necessities: first, upon the necessity for 
division of labor, and second upon the neces- 
sity for freedom in determining this division. 
The world of knowledge is too big for the 
individual scholar or scientist. Bacon's boast 
that he took all knowledge for his province 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxiii 

was vain even in his day; it would be a sign 
of insanity in ours. Bacon did nothing for 
his province in ethics, in political theory, in 
metaphysics, or in the philosophy of reli- 
gion. He stands simply as a great prophet of 
the coming glory of natural science ; as such 
he has a definite and limited outlook upon 
reality. 

The mere fact of perspective does not help 
us much. Nor do we gain very much in clear- 
ness when we note that perspective is deter- 
mined partly by capacity and partly by envi- 
ronment. The ideal physician has an outlook 
upon life that has arisen from native force 
and opportunity. Capacity and call, in a way, 
fix the perspective of mankind ; and the capa- 
cities being many and the calls different, the 
perspective becomes a vast aggregate of con- 
trasts. So far relativity would seem to reduce 
all value to mere like and dislike working 
through the call and the prohibition of so- 
ciety. It would appear to be impossible to 
escape this issue unless we are willing to go 
deeper and stand upon the universal capacity 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

of man as a human being, and upon the uni- 
versal call of duty. Below all special capaci- 
ties is the universal humanity ; below all the 
separate callings is the undivided summons to 
quit ourselves like men. 

Religion generates this just perspective 
because religion founds it upon the universal 
capacity and the universal call. Religion lives 
in the heavenly vision and obedience thereto. 
In the courses of this obedience the perspec- 
tive is purified and extended, as with this obe- 
dience the new perspective was introduced. 
When Paul said, " I was not disobedient 
unto the heavenly vision," he there and then 
changed the perspective of his life ; Jesus of 
Nazareth, who had been the object of his en- 
mity, then became his Master. We hear fur- 
ther of this perspective in these words : " What 
things were gain to me, these have I counted | 
loss for Christ " ; still again, " If any man be 
in Christ, he is a new creature ; old things 
have passed away, all things have become 
new." Religion begins in the vision of the 
moral ideal as the image of God's will for 






THINGS WORTH WHILE xxv 

man ; the resolve to become the servant of the 
moral ideal puts one on a new earth and 
under a new heaven; it does this with all 
religious souls. It therefore opens up one 
general perspective ; and the basis of this 
one general perspective is, as I have said, the 
aniversal capacity and call. 

From the life of the soul in God there arises 
when unhindered the normal perspective of 
faith. The trouble is that this normal perspec- 
tive in the ideas and beliefs of religious men 
is so often suppressed. Our attitude toward 
the Bible may serve as an example. The old 
theory of the verbal inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures was an error in sound human perspective. 
It made of equal importance all parts of the 
Bible because all stood in an equal infallibil- 
ity. The modern method of research is want- 
ing in perspective. All parts of the Bible are 
equally questionable because all share in a 
common uncertainty. Besides, the truth of re- 
search has thrown into shadow the truth of 
religious intuition. The ensign of Scotland is 
a lion rampant on a field of blood. That en- 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

sign hardly tells the truth about the heroic, 
but peace-loving, people of Scotland. Modern 
discussion about the Bible presents the his- 
torical scholar rampant on a field of waste 
and ruin; and thus it has come to pass that 
the Bible as the witness to the Eternal has suf- 
fered that last woe of greatness, it has been 
taken for granted. 

Since the Bible has its chief value as a wit- 
ness to the Eternal, the approach to what is 
central in that witness, whether historical or 
human, should be in the vision of sound per- 
spective. The approach should be like that to 
Zermatt along the valley of the Visp. There 
is tumult and wild beauty all along the way. 
When, however, one gets to Zermatt, still more 
when one ascends to the Riffel Alp or the 
Gorner Grat, a new and grander perspective 
has replaced the old, and in the centre of the 
vista towers the mighty obelisk of the Mat- 
terhorn. It is useless to cry that this is not 
all; it is all the traveler thinks worth while; 
at all events, it is better worth while than 
anything else. 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxvii 

There is a similar ascent in the Bible 
through historical research and through ideas 
of worth to that which is central and supreme. 
There is the rich humanity of Genesis, the 
stormy epic of the Exodus, the roll of great 
oratory in the Deuteronomy, the barbaric 
magnificence of Joshua and Judges, the sign 
of growing civilization in the records of the 
kingdom, the interior depth of the Psalms ; 
there are the piety, speculative daring, and 
world-sympathy of Job, the moral theism and 
the moral humanism of the prophets. All 
along the advance, the scenery is great. Still, 
when one comes to the elevation from which 
the sublime figure of Jesus is visible, it is seen 
to be central, and to call at once for a new 
perspective of values. 

So we judge concerning the very numerous 
beliefs of Christian people. The apostle tells 
us that all flesh is not the same flesh, that one 
star differs from another star in glory. All 
faith is not the same faith ; there is a faith in 
the relatively unimportant and there is a faith 
in the central and supreme. The jumble of 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

interests and values that one so often sees, as 
if all were of equal moment and worth, is 
a sign of the uneducated intellect and the 
unenlightened conscience. The men who 
contend for apostolical succession with as 
much zeal as they do for the permanence of 
the prophetic mind, who fight for ritual as 
uncompromisingly as for the morality of the 
Sermon on the Mount, who are as sure of the 
miracles of the Lord as they are of his love, 
who are unable to discern between beliefs 
about Jesus and the reality of his Person 
working through conceptions clearly inade- 
quate, who refuse to judge between the tem- 
poral and the eternal, who believe in the 
coming of the Holy Ghost and yet leave little 
or nothing for him to do beyond giving his 
sanction to the arrested intellect of the church, 
who will not subordinate the ends of the 
ecclesiastic and the traditionalist to the ideals 
of the Christian thinker and man, are not 
"walking in the light," to quote the negro 
melodv, but in the ni^ht of which Ile^el 
wrote, in which "all the cows are black." 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxix 

II 

Next to just perspective in the values of 
faith, I should place insight into the society 
of persons in our world and in our universe. 
For the Christian thinker the last word about 
the nature of our human world would appear 
to be that it is a society of persons; the final 
thought about the eternal world would seem 
to be that it too is a society of persons or 
spirits. The ultimate wisdom concerning the 
universe is that its substance is in souls. All 
else is accident, mode, temporal form; the 
truth of our universe lies in what I have else- 
where called a republic of souls. 

If we look into the Gospels, we shall find 
this statement confirmed in every part and 
in its full intention and scope. In the mes- 
sage of Jesus the first emphasis is on God 
the Eternal soul: "Our Father who art in 
heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom 
come, thy will be done as in heaven so in 
earth." " God is a spirit, and they that worship 
him must worship him in spirit and in truth." 



xxx INTRODUCTION 

This emphasis is final and sovereign in the 
teaching of Jesus. God the Father of men is 
the indispensable background of his life ; with- 
out the soul of the Eternal the soul of Jesus 
would be an enigma, and his career mean- 
ingless and vain. When we cease to put the 
sovereign emphasis where Jesus put that 
emphasis, however orthodox we may appear 
to be, we part company with him. 

At this point the Unitarian and the Trinita- 
rian traditions naturally correct and strengthen 
each other. Frederick Denison Maurice learned 
from his inheritance of faith that this empha- 
sis upon the Fatherhood of God was the 
strength of the old Unitarianism ; he learned 
from the rich and sober Trinitarianism into 
which his inherited faith grew that the reveal- 
ing, mediatorial, reconciling soul of Jesus 
Christ became the supreme single assurance 
of the Fatherhood of God. When Unitarian- 
ism and Trinitarianism are reduced to two 
great lines of testimony to the reality of souls, 
we see new possibilities of service in them, 
each to the other; how Unitarianism may plead 






THINGS WORTH WHILE xxxi 

for the aboriginal soul, and how Trinitari- 
anism, as one of its merits, may renew the 
vision of God in the vision of Jesus Christ. 

The second line of emphasis in the Gospels, 
and in the entire New Testament, is upon the 
soul of the Lord. He is at the heart of his 
religion. The significance of his soul is bound 
up on the one side with the character of God, 
and on the other with the moral being and 
value of Man. The immediate interest of the 
New Testament is as an introduction to the 
soul of Jesus Christ, as its ultimate interest is 
as an introduction to God the Father. It is 
a symbol of the soul of the Lord, a reflection 
thereof, a way of approach to him, an eleva- 
tion from which he may be seen. Questions 
of criticism, textual or historical, the appa- 
ratus of the scholar and his entire achieve- 
ment, are means to this end. If we are serious, 
and if we know what we are about, we seek 
through the purified and authentic record the 
vision of the soul of the Master. 

The third line of emphasis in the message 
of Jesus is on the souls of men. For Jesus 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

these are the only ultimate realities : the soul 
of the Eternal Father, the soul of his Son and 
Prophet Christ, and the souls of men. These 
souls constitute the substance of all worlds, vis- 
ible and invisible, so far as we are able to 
judge. All outside moral personality is acci- 
dent, mode, temporal form, the mere field or 
camping-ground for the discipline of soul. 
For obvious reasons, the idealistic philosophy 
of the world must always appear to be the 
friend of Christianity. It divides the world 
and the universe into two parts ; it reduces 
them to the abiding and the fleeting; it de- 
scribes the abiding as persons or under some 
aspect of personality ; it holds as fleeting all 
things that fall below moral being. The uni- 
verse comes before the sense as material real- 
ity, beautiful to the eye, full of melody to the 
ear, substantial to touch, and at the farthest 
remove from soul, older than soul, underlying 
it, determining its fate. This same universe 
COmefl before reason in its analytic and con- 
structive might, and at once its beauty and 
melody are seen to be forms of man's expe- 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxxiii 

rience ; its substance dissolves into force, force 
becomes spirit, and that which at first ap- 
peared to be the final antithesis of soul is now 
apprehended as the singular and impressive 
appeal to the soul of man from the soul of 
God. This is the idealistic analysis which no 
enemy can long resist. When moral personal- 
ity is accentuated through a vast and precious 
experience, with all its misgivings, it knows 
itself as the worthiest and the most enduring 
force in our world ; thence it moves to a con- 
fident and compassionate view of all souls; 
thence to the sublime Master and Bishop of 
souls, and through him to the moral being 
of God, to the soul of our Father in heaven. 

Prom this position the entire world of sense 
and time becomes the sacrament of soul. 
Berkeley is right about the world as it lives 
in the senses ; it is the incessant and ordered 
speech of the Infinite Spirit to the spirit in 
man. Trade, art, science, government, philoso- 
phy, religion, and all records of religion are 
but sacraments of the soul of man with the 
soul of his brother, or between the soul of 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

man and the soul of God. Everywhere soul 
is the reality and the end ; everything else — 
church, creed, Bible — is means, the precious 
but passing servant of the sovereign and ever- 
lasting soul. Death awaits everything but 
soul ; in the transformations of being nothing 
is perdurable but soul. Soul and its works are 
the heart of all we know, and the relation 
between these two parts of the spiritual life 
of the world is defined with unsurpassable 
clearness and pathos in these ancient words of 
faith : — 

Of old didst thou lay the foundations of the earth ; 
And the heavens are the work of thy hands. 
They shall perish, but thou shalt endure ; 
Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; 
As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they 

shall be changed : 
But thou art the same, 
And thy years shall have no end. 

Such is the soul of God; according to Chris- 
tian faith, such is the soul of the Lord and 
such the soul of man. 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxxv 

III 

Originality in theological thought is an- 
other of the things that are worth while, and 
never since the apostolic age has there been 
an opportunity for originality in the sane 
meaning of the word such as exists to-day. 
By originality I do not mean mere individual- 
ity, or brilliance, or charm of mind. There is 
a type of mind to which the word originality 
is applied because of its mode of operation, 
and not because of its achievement. Such a 
mind scintillates with wit and humor ; it moves 
by sudden turns and surprises ; it deals in 
hints and suggestions that are novel ; its chief 
value is in its strange, brilliant movement and 
not in its goal. Again, such a mind is artistic, 
original in device, but not in the substance 
of its thought, not in insight or command 
over its subject. This subjective originality 
is immensely interesting and in its way valu- 
able, but it does not concern us here. The 
originality that seems to be priceless is objec- 
tive ; it advances upon its subject in a great 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

invasion, illuminates reality like the sun, and 
while it is itself hard to look at, makes the 
world that lives in its light visible and beau- 
tiful. 

This objective originality is of several grades 
and is adjusted to the differing capacities of 
serious minds. It means, first of all, the new, 
either absolutely or relatively ; in the second 
place, it signifies greater depth in the appre- 
hension of the old and the putting of the old 
thus apprehended in new relations ; finally, it 
stands for immediate contact with reality. 

That there should be absolutely new in- 
sights in the sphere of religion has from time 
immemorial been regarded as something akin 
to madness or blasphemy. Such originality, 
it is generally believed, is possible only to 
ignorance. Only those who know little of 
what the great world has thought can live in 
the vain hope of this achievement. The Chris- 
tian church has accepted the ancient insight 
as exhaustive and final, notwithstanding its 
belief in the infinitude of the sphere of the 
soul and the coming of the Holy Ghost. Even 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxxvii 

the relatively new has been expected only 
from minds of the rarest distinction, and this 
relatively new has been considered infinitesi- 
mal in amount and incidental in importance. 
The antinomies of the old categories of theo- 
logy have vexed the intellect into dissatisfac- 
tion ; they have paralyzed it with despair of 
anything new and better. Under this load 
of humility, enough to sink a navy, it is not 
strange that so few new insights have fresh- 
ened and enriched the weary way of theologi- 
cal science. It is a misfortune to acquiesce in 
the feeling that hereafter the sole possibility 
of originality in the sense of the relatively 
new, lies in the sphere of natural science ; it 
is likewise a mistake. 

To-day we are the witness of at least one 
example of this kind of originality, in the 
universal emergence of a new category of 
theological thought. This new category may 
be expressed in the term humanism. This 
term has been sadly abused in the philoso- 
phical world ; it has been used now in a pro- 
found way and again in a shallow ; it has 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

advanced by evil report and good report ; and 
whether they that are for it or they that are 
against it are the greater in number is not 
clear. Yet the word covers what is incontest- 
ably the profoundest insight of our time, and 
in a genuine and wholesome sense this insight 
is new. 

Notwithstanding what old Xenophanes said 
of the crude anthropomorphism of his day, 
and his fine scorn thereof expressed in his 
famous words that "if cattle or lions had 
hands, so as to paint with their hands and 
produce works of art as men do, they would 
paint their gods and give them bodies in form 
like their own, horses like horses, cattle like 
cattle," his remark is chiefly valuable as show- 
ing that he understood little of his essential 
nature as man, and little of the one Supreme 
Being whose existence he confessed. The same 
want of fundamental clearness and grasp con- 
fuses the theistic argument both in attack 
and defense through almost the entire history 
of thought. It is open to serious question 
Whether Plato knew that his Idea of the 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xxxix 

Good was a form of humanism, whether Aris- 
totle perceived that his Eternal thinker was 
an Eternal man. It is hardly open to question 
that Hume and Mill, in their negative process, 
failed of fundamental clearness here. Indeed, 
it is perhaps not too much to say that for the 
first time in history men are now beginning to 
see clearly that theism is humanism applied 
to the interpretation of the universe; that 
humanism means the apprehension of the In- 
finite through man as the highest we know ; 
that man comes to his best in Jesus Christ, 
and therefore that Christianity is the sover- 
eign form of humanism. That there is risk 
in this interpretation is clear ; it is, however, 
the risk of a great faith, and is therefore worth 
while. Besides, it is well to see that belief in 
God and its opposite mean the victory and the 
defeat of man. Further, we must make this 
choice of the Eternal humanity, or an inferior 
choice, with less reason for its truth, or we 
must stand dumb and helpless in the presence 
of the Infinite. It is not true to say that the 
human interpretation of the Infinite is all we 



xl INTRODUCTION 

can do: we can do nothing; we can substi- 
tute for the human the sub-human or brutal. 
It is true that the human interpretation of 
God is the best we can do, and that while it 
involves the venture of faith, it is infinitely 
worth while. 

Turning now for a moment to the fruitful- 
ness of this new insight, we see at once that 
if God and man are essentially akin, the hu- 
manity of God is that in him which chiefly 
concerns our race. The emphasis is upon his 
character, and the approach to the mystery of 
his being is best made through his character. 
Love is the great illumination in the meta- 
physic of faith. Again, if the divine and the 
human are in essence identical, the old devices 
that were invented to save the dignity of Jesus 
Christ are outgrown. To call Jesus the ideal 
or perfect man is to give him the highest 
possible praise ; it is the same kind of praise 
that we give to God when we address him as 
the Eternal humanity, or when we say, " Our 
Father who art in heaven." The kinship and 
continuity of souls in all worlds is an insight 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xli 

working widely to-day in free minds in the 
Christian church and beyond it ; it is an in- 
sight slowly bringing about something like a 
revolution in the three great departments of 
Christian philosophy, — in theology, in Chris- 
tology, and in anthropology; it is a single 
instance awakening the religious mind of the 
time to the possibility of other new insights of 
a fundamental nature. The time is ripe for the 
discovery of a relatively new order of catego- 
ries as the intellectual expression of the reli- 
gious and Christian heart. 

If originality in the sense of the new or the 
relatively new is a possibility open to question, 
originality as meaning greater depth of ap- 
prehension is not exposed to the same degree 
of doubt. This kind of originality is sorely 
needed, and it is open to a much larger number 
of minds. The old concepts must be made to 
bear prof ounder meanings ; as matter of fact, 
in the lives of religious depth these categories 
carry vaster and more precious burdens. In this 
generation the idea of God means something 
immeasurably more just and humane than it 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

meant even two generations ago. The relation 
of the idea of God to the world of human be- 
ings, contemporary, historic, and racial, has 
brought this idea to a content of moral mean- 
ing inexpressibly richer and grander. Here 
comes into full view one great aspect of the 
originality of Jesus. Compare for a moment 
the idea of God entertained by the loftiest of 
the prophets of Israel and the idea of the God 
and Father of Jesus. The idea is inexpressibly 
more inward and spiritual, it is set in vastly 
deeper and more vital relations, and it carries 
a burden of moral tenderness and humanity 
immeasurably greater. Jesus takes the old 
ideas of God, the love of God and the love of 
man, the kingdom of God, and transforms them 
by the greater depth of his thought and the 
nobler content of meaning which he makes 
them bear. The silver currency has become 
gold, and the gold represents the empire of 
absolute goodness. So the ideas of law and sin, 
ethical ideal and capacity, under the pro- 
founder insight of Jesus, become something 
new. For the precious ideas in the faith of 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xliii 

his people the mind of Jesus was the refiner's 
fire; what went in and what came out were the 
same only in name. This note of originality 
in the teaching of Jesus seldom receives the 
emphasis that it should receive. The ques- 
tion is not whether Plato and Aristotle were 
monotheists, whether the Hebrew prophets 
were the origiuators of moral monotheism, 
whether there have not been numberless per- 
sons of high distinction who held with Jesus 
the Fatherhood of God. The question is, what 
content of meaning did the concept carry? 
The contention is that here, over all compet- 
ing systems, there is immeasurably greater 
purity and depth, and therefore originality, in 
the teaching of Jesus. 

The example of the Master should stimulate 
the disciple. Many ideas of great worth are 
inlaid in the soil of superstition. The ideas of 
revelation, inspiration, regeneration, atone- 
ment, especially the ideas of the supernatural, 
need the refiner's fire. There are elements in 
them of the utmost preciousness ; and yet, be- 
cause of the mass of ignorance and absurdity 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

in which they are imprisoned, they are in 
danger of being flung, by impatient thinkers, 
to the dust-heap. The ideas of faith over its 
entire circle call for greater depth and purity 
of apprehension. Learning is good, but learn- 
ing alone will not do ; penetration is needed, 
the love of ideas that leads the mind to ponder 
them till the day break and the shadows flee 
away. 

The widest opportunity for originality is in 
the immediate contact with spiritual reality. 
Here we touch the peculiar distinction and 
genius of Christianity. The disciples of Jesus 
Christ have free access to God ; they are kings 
and priests to God. Mediatorial systems and 
all devices that put the soul and the Eternal 
apart are foreign to the gospel. One of the 
greatest of the New Testament writings has 
for its object the presentation of this univer- 
sal privilege of Christian men ; they have the 
right to personal approach and immediate fel- 
lowship with God. This, too, is the deepest 
meaning of our Protestantism. The right of 
private judgment is contained in the deeper 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xlv 

right of immediate access to God. This pro- 
f oundest privilege of the disciple of Jesus pro- 
vides for a religion that shall be a religion in 
immediacy, a religion greatened by the sense 
of history yet resting in the present vision of 
Eternal realities. 

We have seen that the structure of our 
human world is personal, that the constitu- 
tion of our universe is personal; both the per- 
sonal world and the personal universe are in 
action and inter-action. This action and in- 
ter-action are going on under our eyes ; they 
mean the throwing into the field of vision 
the phenomena in which souls in time and 
the supreme Eternal soul are revealed. The 
social world and the social universe are vol- 
canic ; the fire and flame are pouring forth 
under our observation. We are free not from 
ancient aid, but from ancient domination; 
we welcome the light of all the ages while we 
refuse to wear their colored spectacles; we 
cherish tradition, but decline to employ it as a 
measuring-rod of truth ; we behold God face 
to face working in this tremendous world of 



xlvi INTRODUCTION 

man, flaming forth his justice and pity and 
calling upon us to lay to heart the vision. 

At length we stand in theology where 
science has stood for centuries, holding the 
past as an aid to immediate vision, declin- 
ing to substitute antique opinion for present 
insight. The pure in heart shall see God. If 
the pure soul may see God the Supreme soul, 
surely he may see all other souls in relation 
one to another and to God ; may see this world 
of souls instinct with God in action, and thus 
come to know through immediate behold- 
ing the greater things of the religion of the 
Lord. 

Second-hand religion is doomed ; it turns 
the Christian church into a pawn-shop and en- 
courages men to trade in things of the spirit. 
Second-hand religion at best is but preserved 
fruit, tolerable only between seasons and in 
the winter of our discontent. The call is for 
the primary dealing with the spiritual world 
and a mind rich in the impressions and im- 
ages that come from immediate contact with 
God. 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xlvii 

One form of immediate contact with God has 
always been held by the faithful. Prayer lives 
in immediacy ; perhaps the most significant 
thing in prayer as used by the faithful in all 
ages and among all races is this fact of imme- 
diacy. It is an impressive exercise to assemble 
in imagination the world as it kneels or stands 
in its moments of prayer, and to reflect upon 
the fact that the world in its prayer is in 
immediate fellowship with God. 

The exercise of mind involved in prayer 
when it ceases to be vain repetition is remark- 
able. No great soul has ever been content to 
address God wholly in the thoughts and words 
of another. Liturgy has its uses ; but liturgy 
as an exclusive prescription is an imperti- 
nence to the soul that would speak to God its 
own life in all its fullness of sorrow and hope; 
it is a serious embarrassment to the soul that 
would, in a congregation of souls, discern their 
need and present that need in the simplicity 
and energy of personal vision to God. Liturgy 
is to be feared, however, chiefly because it 
encourages the dismission of immediacy in 



xlviii INTRODUCTION 

religion. Prayer does not begin till it becomes 
a dialogue of the soul with God, a dialogue in 
the depths of sin and distress or on the heights 
of victory and peace. Prayer, like speech, has 
its style ; and while words and phrases are 
adopted from the litanies of the race, they are 
wrought into new individuality and become 
the servants of the master who employs them, 
living in the distinction of his manner. Sub- 
stitutes here carry with them the shadow of 
death ; to be driven by the difficulty of prayer 
to the refuge of liturgy, is to be driven to de- 
feat along one line of supreme privilege and 
hope. The day that a Congregational minis- 
ter confesses his dependence upon liturgy he 
acknowledges himself beaten where victory is 
worth more than at any other point of the 
field, and he goes forth like Samson shorn of 
his locks, who wist not that his strength was 
departed. 

I suppose that no great soul has ever used 
liturgy other than as an aid. It has been set 
at nought in the central personal wrestle of 
the spirit with God. It is this fact that saves 



THINGS WORTH WHILE xlix 

prayer to the witness of immediacy. Here we 
see that the dialogue of the pious and rapt soul 
with God is one of the things that have kept 
the church close to eternal reality. So long as 
men pray and want to pray, so long as they 
carry hearts burdened with great meanings to 
God, and speak them to him in the simplici- 
ties and nobilities of speech coined under the 
constraint of profound feeling, there will be 
one section of human life, at least, in imme- 
diate communion with God. 

Prayer is, however, an example of the law 
of immediacy that should extend over the 
entire range of religious experience. All the 
interests of religion should be seen by those 
who deal in them. Upon coming from his study 
to the room where his family were gathered, 
Bushnell, with his face shining, replied to the 
question, " What have you seen?" "I have 
seen the Gospel." He had looked for it, toiled 
through worlds of debris to get to it ; finally, 
he arrived ; there it stood in its aboriginal 
splendor and he beheld it. It is pathetic to re- 
flect that on the whole Bushnell's experience 



1 INTRODUCTION 

is singular. It should be universal ; for it ex- 
hibits the call and privilege of every Christian 
man. The hope that in Bushnell seemed auda- 
cious should seem so no longer. The debris 
grows less and less. No world of authority 
to-day throws the sun of righteousness into 
eclipse. When Carlyle began his effort to 
recover Cromwell to the vision of mankind, it 
seemed to him hopeless. He set forth his de- 
spair in words of rare pathos and beauty even 
for him. The hunt was for the god Balder ; 
it was long, hard, desperate ; at length the pur- 
suing soul came to the innermost recesses of 
the under-world where Balder was imprisoned, 
beheld him as he was, saw the veritable Bal- 
der, but could not bring him back. As with 
the lost Balder so it has been with the Gospel 
of Christ. It has sunk under world-incum- 
brances, and great spirits have in the past 
despaired of even seeing it, much less of 
bringing it back. But the day of the Lord is 
here ; and because it is here, his disciples may 
see him and his kingdom and restore them to 
the immediate vision of the faithful. 



THINGS WORTH WHILE li 

IV 

It is worth while to try to get at the inte- 
rior meaning of traditional theological ideas. 
Those who have won their freedom should be 
without impatience, certainly without unfair- 
ness, in dealing with the dominating ideas of 
the past. Freemen should be the first to see 
the elements of present availability in ancient 
beliefs, the swiftest to recognize under an- 
tique forms of thought the evolving spirit of 
truth. Failure here is disgrace, as we see in a 
mind like Bacon. The reader of Bacon who 
knows Plato and Aristotle is ashamed of the 
Englishman's depreciation of the Greek think- 
ers whose grasp of human truth is immeasur- 
ably greater than his; indeed, he figures as 
an extempore genius in comparison with their 
mature and monumental achievement. Bacon 
would have done far better for his new truth 
had he set it in the presence of the old with 
sympathy and honor. 

The theological achievement of Christian 
history needs revaluation ; in this revaluation 



lii INTRODUCTION 

there is surely much to enrich the thinker to- 
day. The sense of history has indeed been too 
often a paralyzing influence ; freedom has too 
frequently been gained by an abrupt break 
with the past, and maintained in fierce antag- 
onism to it. This is abnormal. The sense of 
history should be the recognition of the work- 
ing and expression of the spirit of truth in 
men ; the work and the expression must go 
on ; but continuity among thinkers should be 
preserved by the present greatening the past. 
Essential ideas need not lose their historic 
associations when lifted into new range and 
character. Progressive minds have greatly 
erred here ; they have seldom seen the law of 
the kingdom of truth, — first the blade, then 
the ear, and then the full corn in the ear ; sel- 
dom have they kept the memory of the spring 
morning in the rich and glowing beauty of 
autumn. Background is thus apt to be absent 
from the work of the pioneer ; the vast world 
of man is reduced to a single aspect ; the 
vitalization of ideas that comes from their as- 
sociation with the greatest minds in immemo- 



THINGS WORTH WHILE liii 

rial reaches of time is too lightly regarded ; 
the prophet is not lifted as he should be by 
the consciousness that the whole ideal majesty 
of the past seeks new and higher utterance in 
him. Our creative work in theology is crude 
on this account ; it is mean through narrow 
sympathies; and our spirituality lacks the 
body and flavor which the consciousness of 
history alone can impart. 

For these reasons I deplore the easy disre- 
gard, so common to-day, of the great imper- 
fect ideas of historic theology. The mention 
of the Trinity to-day, among progressive 
minds of every name, is apt to produce a smile ; 
to say a word in its behalf is apt to be re- 
garded as at best a pardonable lapse into sen- 
timent. This attitude I am bold enough to 
call unworthy and even shallow. Great minds 
contended with one another in a battle royal 
for the attainment of the best insight into the 
being of God. You may dislike their name 
for what they found ; are you sure that you 
can live without the reality on which their 
vision rested ? When a thinker like Professor 



liv INTRODUCTION 

Royce comes to the conclusion, in his great 
essay supplementary to that on the Concep- 
tion of God, that distinctions of vital moment 
to man are eternal in the Godhead, students 
of theology should pause and reflect. 

I confess that the vision of the Deity with 
an ineffable society in himself, complete and 
perfect in himself before all worlds, the ground 
and hope of our social humanity when in the 
fullness of time it was brought forth, a social 
Deity, expressing himself in the evangelical 
terms that denote the generic phases of our 
human world, — the Father and the Son and 
the Holy Spirit, — is to me, both for the in- 
tellect and the heart, of quite inexpressible 
moment. Here I find the eternal archetype of 
the social world of man ; here I discover its 
eternal basis and the hope of its perfect reali- 
zation. It is worth while to try to get inside 
the hard, arithmetical, dialectical movement 
of thought, and thus gain something of the 
richness and grandeur of this ancient theistic 
insight. 

In the Nicene creed and the ideas that lie 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lv 

behind it, one finds the great conception of 
man constituted as spirit in the image of the 
Eternal Son. The deeper Unitarian thinkers 
have always seen how much greater the 
Athanasian. doctrine is than the Arian. The 
doctrine of man depends upon the doctrine of 
Christ ; if Christ is only similar to God, then 
man is only similar. If Christ is consubstan- 
tial with the Father, so are all his children in 
time. I am unable to see why men who think 
resolutely should hesitate to affirm the deity 
of Jesus Christ. If there is no deity in Jesus 
Christ, he is not the son of God ; if there is 
no deity in man, he is not the child of God. 
What we need to-day is faith in a race con- 
substantial with God, issuing in the sincere 
confession of the deity of Jesus Christ and 
the deity of man. The special incarnation of 
God in Jesus has been held and fought for 
by the historic church; the incarnation of 
God in man as man has been revived from 
early Christian thought by the Unitarian lead- 
ers ; we should see that these beliefs are not 
contradictory. The belief about Jesus implies 



Ivi INTRODUCTION 

the belief about man. We are not called upon 
to dethrone the Lord ; the summons is to lift 
the race whose prophet he is. When we repeat 
the Lord's Prayer, if we know what we are 
doing, we confess the consubstantiality of our 
being with the being of God. When we fall 
from this doctrine of the essential identity in 
difference of God and man, we fall into a sea 
of images. God is our Father and we are his 
children only in parable ; the family relation 
is only an image, dear to feeling, of something 
transcendental and inscrutable. Our human 
world forms images of God according to its 
own best relations, and it employs these as 
symbols of its worth to the Eternal ; the truth 
being that the Eternal is essentially unlike us 
men and in his essence absolutely inaccessible 
to men. This is the nemesis that waits upon 
an inferior doctrine of man ; and he alone 
moves on a level to which this nemesis cannot 
rise who has entered the ancient conception 
of the consubstantiality of man with God. 

When we come to our New England theo- 
logy, it is fair to say that its humanity is 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lvii 

undivine and its Divinity inhuman. That, 
however, is not the whole truth. Its ideas of 
sovereignty, sin, regeneration, reconciliation, 
and life in the spirit are essentially imper- 
ishable conceptions of faith. The sovereignty 
of the universe belongs to something ; our 
great predecessors reasoned that it belonged 
to God. The tragedy of the world of man is 
before us ; it is a wild and terrible issue of 
inherited tendency and individual initiative, 
of mistake and perversity ; it lies heavy upon 
the soul of the idealist to-day, and no doctrine 
of man can long detain serious persons that 
refuses to take this tremendous aspect of hu- 
man society ijito account. The old idea of the 
exceeding sinfulness of man is but the dark 
obverse of the blazing idealism with which 
our fathers judged the world. With a con- 
science in heaven man discovered himself and 
his world in hell. There is a moral depth in 
the old anthropology that atones for much of 
its theoretic crudeness. There is probably no 
tradition in the church so utterly worthless 
from a formal point of view as the doctrine 



lviii INTRODUCTION 

of the atonement. Intellectually, it is confu- 
sion worse confounded ; yet the human need 
that works through this tradition of reconcili- 
ation to the highest ideal within the soul and 
to the Holiest in the universe, and rests there 
for evermore, is a revelation of the utmost 
depth in man and the utmost moral height 
in God. It is one thing to see the dust-heap 
of tradition and another to discover there the 
gold and the precious stones. 

It is no valid objection to say that we do 
not construe the doctrine of God or of man 
as these were construed by men of old. Our 
object as thinkers is truth ; and in the search 
for truth we do not resolve ideas into the 
times of their immaturity and keep them in 
this bondage, but following the supreme ex- 
ample, we wink at these ideas so conceived 
and expressed. Our purpose is to conserve 
the intellectual treasure of faith and turn it to 
new and more fruitful issues. The history of 
Christian theology may be written in a man- 
ner that makes it look as the Roman Forum 
or the Coliseum looks to-day. It may be con- 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lix 

ceived as the achievement of an outgrown 
age and presented as a great and tragic ruin. 
Surely there is another and a better way of 
conceiving and representing these imperish- 
able ideal forces. It is possible to enter the 
mind of these antique architects of thought, 
everywhere revise and greaten the plan ; it is 
possible to do something toward the presenta- 
tion of the finished design. Such an attempt 
is at least worth while : it issues in the sense 
of the great unbroken succession of prophets 
and thinkers ; it preserves the precious sense 
of the continuity of faith ; it enables the pro- 
foundest and the most unsparing criticism to 
go hand in hand with generous constructive 
purpose ; it blends in one the passion for 
truth and the passion for humanity. 

v 

The way of salvation is another thing 
worth while. The actual condition and the 
ideal condition of human beings and the way 
from the one to the other are worthy of pro- 
found consideration. For most men life is a 



lx INTRODUCTION 

sordid and miserable labyrinth ; to picture 
the freedom that exists beyond this labyrinth 
is not enough ; the chief, need is to find the 
way out. Jesus came to seek and to save men 
lost to the true uses, satisfactions, and hopes 
of existence ; and his religion still offers itself 
as the way of rescue and return. Human 
beings are caught in a tremendous tragedy in 
which death seems to be the only way out. 
Perversity is one fountain of the moral evil 
or sin of the soul ; men distinctly refuse light 
and prefer Barabbas to Jesus. Ignorance is 
another fountain of wrongdoing ; there is a 
gigantic mistake firing the pulse of wicked- 
ness ; "if thou hadst known the things which 
belong to thy peace ! " The evil condition is 
confirmed through weakness; the animal in 
man is strong, the spirit is faint. Thus moral 
evil tends more and more to take on the 
character of a malady ; the world is sick and 
needs the physician of the soul. 

Here is the material which was shaped by 
men of old into doctrines of original sin, de- 
pravity, and atonement. These were forms of 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lxi 

diagnosis; we set them aside because they do 
not explain the case or call for the best treat- 
ment. The old material, the complex misery 
of man, is still here ; our understanding of it 
must be less morbid, less the work of imagina- 
tion, less at the mercy of strange riotous emo- 
tions, simpler, healthier, and more in accord 
with the fundamental notion that we are liv- 
ing in a redemptive universe. Still, the woe- 
ful condition must be acknowledged; men 
who pattern existence after the beast of the 
field are ill at ease. Those who try to live on 
bread alone are attempting the impossible, and 
their sorrow is great. The world was made 
to run on the two rails of flesh and mind, 
energized from a third rail alive with God, 
and this world is engaged in the reduction of 
existence to an impossible simplicity. When 
the heart has a thousand tongues, it is vain 
to declare that it has but one. 

There is crime in the world, and law under- 
takes to deal with that ; there is vice in soci- 
ety, and public opinion measures itself against 
that ; there is the selfishness sanctified by cus- 



lxii INTRODUCTION 

torn that works through the established order 
of human life, often ruthless as death, and 
the moral reformer attacks that ; there is the 
hidden, pitiable plight of the soul in its per- 
versity, ignorance, and malady, and the pro- 
phet of the Christian gospel addresses himself 
primarily to that. The seat of our difficulty 
and our woe is here. In this labyrinth we are 
caught, and religion is nothing unless it shall 
provide a way of escape. 

The appeal of the gospel at this point is 
great. It does not limit its attention to the 
moral patrician ; it does not select the fairest 
portion of society and pitch its tent there ; it 
does not come to call the righteous, who are 
often merely the self-righteous, but sinners. 
It sees and understands the tragedy in which 
the vast majority of human beings live and 
suffer ; it has insight, wide and profound, and 
boundless sympathy. It thus wins its way, 
gains a hearing, and sets up the moral ideal in 
the depraved life in an atmosphere of Divine 
pity and Eternal consolation ; it is thus able 
to begin a new creation in the animal life of 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lxiii 

men, to found and build the kingdom o£ God ; 
it thus becomes a redemptive religion, a way 
of salvation, and Jesus is known as Redeemer 
and Saviour. 

Here we see the strength of the evangelical 
tradition. Its analyses are poor, its formal 
beliefs inadequate, its philosophies of the life 
of the soul crude ; but all these defects are as 
nothing when set beside its sense of the sin 
and woe of the world, its great sympathies, 
and its message of the compassion of God in 
Jesus Christ. On account of its primal con- 
sciousness of the moral tragedy of human life, 
its experimental knowledge of deliverance 
through the pity of God mediated by Jesus 
Christ, its abiding sympathy, and its glorious 
service, the Christianity of the evangelical sur- 
vives and is bound to survive. 

The purified philosophy of the Christian 
religion must absorb this precious element in 
the evangelical tradition. To take over all 
that goes with that tradition is impossible ; 
can two walk together unless they are agreed? 
The origin of our human tragedy as in the 



lxiv INTRODUCTION 

Adam and Eve story ; the universality and ne- 
cessity of human depravity as the inescapable 
devil's birthright of every child that comes 
into the world ; the cross of Christ as the sym- 
bol of the expiation of God's wrath or as a 
debt paid on our behalf, or as a substitution 
for our suffering demanded by the majesty of 
offended law ; the limitation of moral oppor- 
tunity to this life ; the reduction of the voca- 
tion of Jesus to the salvation of the elect ; the 
claim that God is not on the side of every soul 
that he has made, are not essential to the 
spirit of the evangelical tradition ; rather they 
are the impedimenta to be abandoned in the 
decisive battle that is now upon us. 

As thought about God is freed from fear 
it must at once ascend in love. Here is our 
difficulty, the difficulty, too, of the nobler tra- 
dition of the intellect in all generations. As 
the intellect has been freed from fear it has 
not always ascended in love; it has abandoned 
the lower and its peculiar power while it has 
failed to find the higher and its mightier mo- 
tive. An evil spirit has too often haunted the 



THINGS WORTH WHILE Ixv 

work of the free intellect. This spirit has 
made the intellect careless of the religion of 
children and youth, unmindful of the religious 
needs of pagans at home and abroad, and cal- 
lous in the presence of the moral and spiritual 
condition of society. Religion has become a 
programme for the patrician ; it has lost its 
democratic breadth and vitality ; it has sunk 
into an affair of concepts. Better concepts are 
a gain surely over poorer; but what are better 
concepts with no enthusiasm for humanity in 
comparison with crude concepts fired with pas- 
sionate concern for human souls? 

The reasonable faith of the future must 
take up into itself the prevailing forces in 
historic Christianity. It must shape its ideas 
in the presence of human need, conserve the 
spirit that makes the wilderness and the soli- 
tary place rejoice, concern itself with the high- 
ways to Zion, remember those who sit in 
darkness and in the shadow of death ; it must 
be the prophet of a redemptive universe and 
present the Christian religion as the way of 
salvation; it must not surrender to a crude 



Ixvi INTRODUCTION 

and discredited scheme of thought the great 
names of Redeemer and Saviour as applied to 
Jesus ; it must reclaim them and fill them with 
a purer and mightier content. 

VI 

There is still another interest which, it 
seems to me, is of the gravest concern for 
religious men of all types of opinion, — the 
demonstration of the spirit. Is there a spirit 
in man? Is there a Spirit in the universe? Is 
it possible for the spirit in man and the Spirit 
in the universe to meet now, and may we look 
for the demonstration of the Holy Spirit ? 

This brings us face to face with that which 
is absolutely essential to Christian faith. The 
reality of the Christian religion depends upon 
the truth of these three propositions: there is 
a spirit in man ; there is a Spirit in the 
universe; these meet in the victorious moral 
experience. The denial of spirit is the denial 
of God, the denial of the moral being of man, 
and the denial of the truth of the teaching of 
Jesus. If these three propositions are untrue, 






THINGS WORTH WHILE lxvii 

our faith is vain ; if they are incapable of 
attestation, we are left in hopeless confusion ; 
if they are true, and if they are open to veri- 
fication, all other interests of faith become 
subordinate and even incidental. 

Here we see at once how impossible it is to 
limit the process of faith to the intellect. The 
proof that we seek, the evidence that we de- 
mand, the demonstration that we crave, must 
be in and through the courses of life. Spirit 
is not adequately defined as immaterial force, 
nor as bare, unqualified consciousness, nor as 
personality pure and simple. Spirit is moral 
personality, conscious being in the character 
and power of love. If it is true that God is 
love, it is true that God is spirit. If it is true 
that man may become a lover and servant of 
the heavenly vision, it is true that man has the 
capacity of perfect spirit. If it is true that 
the Eternal lover and the human may meet in 
time and live, the Divine love in the human, 
it is true that man may have fellowship with 
God. These propositions are, however, hypo- 
thetical, and no more, while they remain in 



.lxviii INTRODUCTION 

the sphere of the intellect ; only through moral 
being in action can they be authenticated as 
true. 

Christian experience is the great defense of 
the faith. All other defenses run back into 
this ; the citadel of faith is in the possibility 
of moral victory amid the waste and shame of 
the world. In this demonstration of spirit the 
first note is in the joint action of the personal 
soul with the Infinite soul. Then follows the 
social endeavor always in joint action with God, 
in the attack upon the brutalities of trade, the 
inhumanities of wealth and power, the mean 
acquiescence of men in their weakness and 
sordidness, the infamy of race hatreds, the 
fatal force of class distinctions when viewed in 
any other light than as providing distinct and 
greater service to the whole ; the injustice of 
government, the merely provisional character 
of much in law, the warfare of man upon man, 
the colossal denial in action of human bro- 
therhood. The joint action of the spirit in 
man and the Spirit in the universe over the 
whole breadth of humanity is the sole and 



THINGS WORTH WHILE Ixix 

only way to articulate the demonstration of 
the ultimate realities of faith. 

It is reported that Daniel Webster during 
his last days said, in answer to some words 
about the hereafter, " The fact is what I want/' 
What we need in the deepest things of the 
soul is reality. Subtle reasoning may be a clever 
concealment of ignorance, skill in dialectics 
may be merely the trick of the intellectual 
juggler, even a sober and weighty order of 
concepts may come to appear an imagination, 
unsubstantial as a dream. Substance, reality, 
fact, is the great demand of the vexed soul ; 
and in vain do we try to meet this demand 
beyond the tides of life itself. 

If we look into the Old Testament, we see 
at once that its strength is here. Reality is 
an issue through the intellect from the moral 
being of man. Everywhere reality is attained 
and articulated through action. The Old Testa- 
ment presents a moral world in action ; and 
through this world in action the eternal reality 
is delivered. Speculation apart from the suffer- 
ing and achieving spirit is foreign to the gen- 



Ixx INTRODUCTION 

ius of the Old Testament. It is equally foreign 
to the genius of the New Testament. The 
greatest thing in the Gospels is the authenti- 
cation which the teaching of Jesus receives in 
his life. He returned from his temptation in 
the power of the Spirit ; his whole career was 
in the demonstration of the Spirit. His method 
of authentication is set forth in the words; 
u He that doeth the will of God shall know 
the doctrine/' Thus Arnold's plea for conduct 
as three fourths of life, Robertson's conten- 
tion in behalf of knowledge through obedience, 
and Fichte's great insight that the test of 
reality is not in feeling nor in thought, but in 
action, are set forth with incomparable clear- 
ness and completeness in the way of the Lord. 
If our homage to intellect is to be a reason- 
able homage, the limits of pure intellect must 
be clearly seen. No man can by mere search- 
ing find God. Reality is not originated by 
thought, and in the realm of the soul it is not 
discovered by pure thought. Here the will is 
king and the intellect servant. Men wait to- 
day as never before for the new and deeper 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lxxi 

thought ; but they wait for something more. 
The best thought leaves us at the outer gate 
of Paradise ; it leaves this Paradise in the re- 
gion of possibility. Aristotle's two great words 
are 8iW/u? and eWpyeia, possibility and 
actuality, and they are of moment here. Pure 
thought gives possibility and no more; to give 
actuality, the will must work with the intel- 
lect. Hence the universal appreciation of the 
great moral personality ; such a personality is 
a world-revealer, a world-authenticator. The 
society of moral persons interpreted through 
moral genius is therefore the ultimate source 
of revelation, because it is the final authenti- 
cation of the ideas of faiths Christian society 
inhabited by the heavenly vision, thoroughly 
aroused, in action, and going as the sea goes 
when the tempest has been upon it for many 
days, or as the planet goes in perpetual exem- 
plification of the great law of gravity, would 
know itself and its universe as spirit, and it 
would declare in the irresistible logic of the 
creative life the reality and the coming of the 
kingdom of love. 



lxxii INTRODUCTION 

Our wisest thinkers have always seen that 
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the deepest 
in our Christian faith. Here is the hope of 
the hardened impenitent, the demoralized pen- 
itent, the soul in its ignorance and perversity, 
in its blazing idealism and its mean and black 
actuality. Here is the ground of our confidence 
in the growing revelation of God to mankind, 
in the unbroken succession of the prophets and 
their availing service in the continuous up- 
ward movement of the thought and character 
of the race. That nothing essential may be 
lost ; that everything prophetic may be brought 
to perfect realization ; that error may be elimi- 
nated ; that evil may be overcome and done 
away, converted into eternal warning, and 
used as material to deepen the moral conscious- 
ness of man; that the great past may find 
expression in the greater present ; and that the 
greater present may come at length to the con- 
summation of the future, we rely upon the Holy 
Spirit. But this reliance must not be through 
mere or pure thought ; it must be through 
action, joint action, till our world heaves and 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lxxiii 

sighs with the indwelling energy of God, con- 
sciously invoked and let in through the con- 
sent and authentic cry of the soul. 

Apart from this world of triumphant moral 
energy, all great symbols of the Christian 
faith, all theologies and philosophies of reli- 
gion, the poetry of the church, and even the 
Bible itself with its attestation of a moral 
humanity in communion with a moral Deity, 
become as dead leaves in the whirl of the 
autumn wind. A contemporary world devoid 
of God in the rhythm and fire of its action, 
leaves the historic world of faith pale and 
ineffectual. In religion the sovereign word is 
now. Man and the universe are to-day before 
the judgment seat, and nothing in the way of 
defense will finally avail but the present attes- 
tation of spirit. 

The principle of unity in this series of 
things that have been said to be worth while 
is the living soul of man in fellowship with 
other souls and with God. From this abori- 
ginal order we gain our vision of a world of 
spirit, a universe of Spirit ; to this primal order 



lxxiv INTRODUCTION 

of persons we come for original insight ; this 
authentic order it is that sanctifies the an- 
tique in all its nobler phases ; for man as soul 
we seek the way of salvation ; and through 
this ultimate reality we crave the demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit. The rational approximates 
the real as its image, but the rational is not 
the real ; being and thought are two and not 
one, — twins of the Siamese order they may 
be, yet each has a distinct existence. The 
world is constituted in God ; our humanity is 
constituted in God ; it is the task of thought 
to discover this divine constitution of man 
and his world. The discovery is an intellec- 
tual satisfaction, and it is more : it is a condi- 
tion of vital enlargement. For in the case of 
beings constituted in moral freedom, growth 
is not inevitable, it waits upon self-discovery. 
The great words in the Parable of the Lost 
Son are these : " When he came to himself." 
From the first he had been made according to 
a noble plan; the operation of this plan was 
not inevitable ; it was helpless save in the way 
of protest and nemesis till self-knowledge ar- 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lxxv 

rived. Therefore man's being and the being 
of man's world demand the service of the 
enlightened mind. 

Indeed, one of the woes of religion in all 
time is its refusal of the service of the enlight- 
ened and noble intellect. All other human 
interests prosper as they are served by clear 
intellect ; no sane person imagines that pro- 
gress is anywhere possible in these interests 
except through larger knowledge and deeper 
insight. Our world of science and applied 
science is the demonstration of what the intel- 
lect can do for human advancement ; the ad- 
vancement of science is in many ways the 
advancement of man. Yet in the face of all 
this, men are tempted to exclude the intellect 
from religion, or to reduce it to an affair of 
the intellect. The refusal to admit the intel- 
lect to the service of religion means the rapid 
degeneration of religion. Many painful exam- 
ples of this degeneration exist. Where degen- 
eration has become decided, religion has sunk 
to a compound of superstition and reality, a 
jumble of the incredible and the precious ; and 



lxxvi INTRODUCTION 

as a consequence it has lost its power over 
the educated mind. It is indeed deplorable to 
reflect how distrust and exclusion of the scien- 
tific intellect have reduced even the Christian 
religion, in many places, to the consolation of 
ignorance. 

On the other side, it must be said that in- 
tellect is not scientific if it be not in full 
sympathy with its subject. In the free world 
of Protestantism we have intellect enough 
and more than enough of its kind. It is too 
often intellect without so much as the smell 
of religion in its operations ; it is intellect un- 
aware of the infinite reality of the Christian 
religion as it lives in the heart and conscience 
of Christendom, unconscious of its task as 
interpreter, and unfit through want of expe- 
rience for insight and service. Therefore the 
damage that ensues to religion from the unfit 
intellect is about as great as that which results 
from the exclusion of intellect. Between re- 
ligion as a mindless product and religion as 
the issue of an irreverent mind, there is little 
to choose. We are not shut in, however, to 



THINGS WORTH WHILE lxxvii 

either alternative ; we hear the call of the 
truly scientific intellect that loves facts, that 
lives in them, that seeks for reality in the 
suffering and achieving spirit, that finds it 
there as the miner discovers the gold in the 
rock, that digs it and brings it forth, passes, 
it through its thousand furnace-fires, and pre- 
sents it at last to the world that cares for 
reality beyond everything else, in utter purity 
and splendor. 

In dividing the world of faith into the 
essential and unessential there is always in- 
volved some sacrifice of sentiment, some dan- 
ger of melting the rich detail of religion into 
the abstract and remote, some liability of sub- 
stituting for the glowing compound of ex- 
perience " an unearthly ballet of bloodless 
categories." While the division is valid and 
must be made, I do not forget that things 
eternal come through things temporal, that 
great religion naturally expresses itself in the 
sensuous richness and color of great poetry ; 
nor do I undervalue the immense gain for 
human feeling when the Eternal is transfig- 



lxxviii INTRODUCTION 

ured in the pathos and beauty of our human 
world. I recall that I once saw Mont Blanc 
at sunset from Morges on the Lake of Geneva. 
Across the lake the vision passed, and up 
the ravine beyond to the base of the great 
mountain, and from the base to the summit. 
There it stood in the glow of evening, trans- 
figured for a few great moments, in the fare- 
well fires of day. Soon the shadow of flame 
passed ; it passed with regret to those who saw 
it come, who beheld it fade, and who loved 
its beauty; but when it was gone, the main 
object of interest remained, the mountain, 
solitary, sublime, everlasting. So in our faith 
the imperishable burns in the fires of the 
perishable. The abiding substance of faith 
is thus transfigured in the pathos of time. 
The shadow of God becomes inexpressibly 
dear to men ; still the shadow of God is only 
shadow, and when it vanishes, God himself 
remains the Eternal wonder and joy. 



BELIGXON AND MIEACLE 



CHAPTER I 

THE ISSUE DEFINED 



MY first word must be one of thanks for 
the honor done me by Yale University 
in inviting me to lecture on the Nathaniel W. 
Taylor Foundation. It is one of many similar 
privileges and distinctions that I have received 
during the last twenty years from the same 
honored source. My association with Yale 
University, while of little moment to her, has 
been one of the highest satisfactions of my 
life. I should take more pleasure in this new 
honor if it did not bring me face to face with 
a grave responsibility. He must be wanting 
in moral sensibility who faces this lectureship 
without serious misgiving. For it must be re- 
membered that Dr. Taylor is a great historic 

l 



2 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

figure in the evolution of the New England 
theology. Indeed, no small part of the felicity 
of this Foundation is in doing something to 
rescue a great and brilliant name from the 
oblivion that lies in wait for all save the sub- 
lime remnant of the servants of God. Too 
readily does the generation in power consent 
to this robbery of time ; too easily does it take 
for granted the inevitableness of this erasure 
of shining names from the memory of the liv- 
ing. While there are a few names that the 
world cannot forget, so deeply are they en- 
graved on its heart, there are many whom 
it behooves the world not to forget. Noble 
men recognize as part of their duty to their 
time this recollection of famous lives; to this 
end they enter into a humane conspiracy to 
defeat the second death to which every servant 
of truth and righteousness is exposed. 

It would be something of a reproach if we 
who honor the great and difficult science of 
theology should lightly cease to regard so 
eminent a master of that science as Nathaniel 
W. Taylor. Here was a man of capacious and 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 3 

brilliant intellect, lifted by long and severe 
discipline to the temper and efficiency of a 
Damascus blade. Among worthy objects of 
admiration, educated men will always give a 
high place to the powerful and splendid intel- 
lect. To be admitted to the study of a mind 
of this order, to gain some sense of its range 
and efficiency, to come under the fascination 
of its movement and power, is one of the 
greatest educational forces known to man. 
There is no surer way of gaining in intellec- 
tual strength and integrity than by joining 
ourselves, in critical homage, to the great his- 
toric masters of our particular discipline. Ad- 
miration for Dr. Taylor is well founded, and 
in the rushing extempore world into which we 
have come, with its too frequent affluence of 
words and its poverty of ideas, — and where 
ideas do exist, their crudity and confusion, — 
familiarity with the premeditation, plan, order, 
precision, sequence, vigor, and rigor of this 
master must issue in good and in good only 
to the enthusiastic and wise student. 

Nor must we overlook the greatness of 



4 KELIGION AND MIEACLE 

Dr. Taylor's theological interest. His central 
thought was the moral government of the 
world. He does not conceive and shape his 
subject as we should like him to do ; his 
method of treatment does not always com- 
mend itself to the sense of science and his- 
tory that to-day controls the scholar and 
thinker; his work in many ways is a disap- 
pointment; yet when all this has been said, 
and said with emphasis, it still remains clear 
and incontestable that Dr. Taylor gave his 
life to the service of one of the deepest and 
most momentous interests of the human mind, 
— the moral order of the world, the moral 
character of the universe. 

Here again, therefore, we recall his name 
with honor, and under the inspiration of his 
illustrious example we turn from the lighter 
concerns of faith to the greater, from the 
trivial to the eternal. In raising the issue as 
to the relation of religion to miracle, I may 
assuredly count upon the favor of his valiant 
ami free spirit; in declaring that religion 
stands on its own feet, lives by its own might, 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 5 

I may further count upon his sympathy ; in 
asserting that religion is independent of mir- 
acle, I may claim his eager and benign interest 
if I cannot be sure of his consent. In any 
event, my discussion is in the freedom of the 
spirit which is our most precious inheritance 
from all the greater masters of the New Eng- 
land divinity. They were stern men, whose 
hearts grew sick over every " mush of conces- 
sions/' who hated unreality under every dis- 
guise, who reserved for the pretentious but 
vacant mind a noble contempt, and who ex- 
acted of the thinker in freedom nothing but 
honest work done in the solemn sense of ac- 
countability to God and man. 

I may as well begin my discussion of re- 
ligion and miracle by telling you the upshot 
of it all. Many persons will not start seri- 
ously to read a romance till they have glanced 
through the final chapters and are sure that 
the issues of the plot are satisfactory. John 
Henry Newman, an adept in argument, used 
to remark that one can convince men by logic 
when one can shoot round corners ; and while 



6 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

this statement is a manifest exaggeration, it 
nevertheless reveals the liquid prejudice in 
which the minds of most men float. There is 
apt to be a bias in the mind, and men with a 
bias will dispute an axiom when it points the 
wrong way, like the farmer who said he would 
not admit that twice two are four till he saw 
what use his antagonist intended to make of 
the admission. A friend told me that he took 
the greatest delight in reading over and over 
again the account of certain battles whose 
issue was completely satisfactory to him. The 
battles of Marathon, Arbela, Cannae, Pharsalia, 
Waterloo, and Gettysburg were a perpetual 
treat to him because he knew what was com- 
ing and liked it. I fear this is the mood in 
which multitudes of men follow a course of 
argument. If they know the issue and like it, 
then the reasoning is a delight ; if they know 
the conclusion and dislike it, the argument is 
undone. 

The issue of my argument is such as to com- 
mend itself to all sensible and good men. I 
am not concerned with the destruction of 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 7 

belief in miracle ; my purpose is not to prove 
or discuss the unreality of miracle. I do not 
touch this vast wonder-world except inciden- 
tally in a few preliminary observations. My 
plea is not against miracle, but against the 
identification of the fortune of religion with 
the fortune of miracle. My contention is in 
behalf of the Christian religion in its essence. 
The Christian religion is the vision of the 
Eternal moral order and the vision of the 
Eternal grace in that order : these two visions 
are living forces in Jesus Christ ; from him they 
go forth to work through all human history, 
to meet and overcome the vision of sin and 
death. I maintain that the solution of all our 
graver difficulties is through prof ounder living 
in God. The genius of religion is forever re- 
vealed in these sovereign words : — 

The Eternal God is thy dwelling place, 
And underneath are the everlasting arms. 

More and more we return to the apostolic 
declaration that in him we live and move and 
have our being ; above all, we seek in the 



8 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

school of Christ the moral sincerity that issues 
in the vision of God. With this announce- 
ment of purpose, and with this anticipation of 
my conclusion, I ask you to " hear me for my 
cause.' ' 

ii 

Two things, and two things only, are abso- 
lutely essential to religion in its highest form, 
to the Christian religion, — the sense of the 
fatherly love of God, and the answering sense 
on man's part of filial love and obedience. 
The Christian religion as it stands in the con- 
sciousness of its Founder is his sense of the 
perfect fatherly love of God and the answer to 
this of the filial love and obedience of his own 
soul. In the disciples of Jesus the same double 
consciousness exists. There is the conscious- 
ness of the infinite compassionate love of the 
Father in heaven, and there is the answering 
consciousness of the human spirit in its ideals, 
purposes, and struggles. To this central con- 
sciousness, with its Divine and human aspects, 
Jesus remains the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life. He is the example of the way in which 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 9 

men come to know God as Father and them- 
selves as sons of God — the vision of the uni- 
verse through what is highest in the soul, the 
acceptance of the verdict of the spirit as to the 
value of man's life. Jesus is the example of 
the truth ; he is the union in perfect clearness 
and peace of the consciousness of God as 
Father and the consciousness of man as the 
son of God. He is the example of the life ; he 
is the life of victorious justice, purity, pity, 
and sacrifice which flows from the truth. The 
uniqueness of Jesus is here as Way, as Truth, 
and as Life ; and this uniqueness in fact is pre- 
sented for interpretation to the philosophic 
mind. 

From the personal sense of God and of the 
soul as his child, made effectual and happy in 
the presence of the great authentic Master, 
the free mind ranges far and wide, seeking 
intimations of the ultimate character of the 
universe and the essential nature of man. 
From the centre of light and peace it travels 
to the far circumference where twilight and 
night appear. The result is that the universe 



10 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

becomes the form of the Eternal. This formal 
universe is two-fold, — cosmic and human, — 
and the cosmos is the vast stage on which is 
enacted the divine tragedy of human history. 

This simple and self-sustaining conception of 
religion relates itself necessarily to other human 
interests. It embodies itself in an institution, 
that is, it becomes a church ; it becomes a spe- 
cial vocation, calling into existence the prophet 
and his great ministry; it becomes a creed, 
that is, it relates itself to the philosophy of 
religion, and to the general philosophy of the 
world. It relates itself to nature and raises the 
question: In what way does nature become 
the servant of religion, through portent, mir- 
acle, signs, and wonders, or through a stead- 
fast and inviolable order? It is with this last 
relation of religion that we are now concerned, 
— its relation to nature and to nature under 
the conception of miracle and under that of 
law. 

What is a miracle ? It must be confessed 
that it is difficult to answer this question to 
the entire satisfaction of any group of think- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 11 

ers ; to answer it in a manner satisfactory to 
all. would seem to be impossible. Here is the 
beginning of confusion in the discussion of 
this subject. Whether one believes in miracle 
or disbelieves in it, he cannot very well say 
till he has determined the nature of miracle. 
While men think different things under the 
same term, it is unreasonable to look for either 
clearness or concord. Misunderstanding be- 
tween disputants is a widespread phenome- 
non; at times it seems to be a phenomenon 
persistent and ineradicable. When ideas lie in 
confusion, only patient and noble minds may 
hope eventually to see eye to eye. 

What makes the question of miracle of 
vital moment is the traditional assumption 
that it is essential to Christian faith. There 
can be no doubt that the feeling exists among 
multitudes of good people that a wonder- 
working God is the mightier being ; as a 
Scottish saint expressed it, "I love to think 
that I have a God who can shake the world." 
The shaking is all the better, the more violent 
and abnormal it appears to be. A God con- 



12 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

fined to one way of doing things, even if that 
one way seems to be on the whole the best, 
impresses many good people as a God existing 
under something less than ideal freedom and 
perfection. Nor is it fair to hold that among 
those of this way of thinking there are few 
persons of intellectual distinction. Opinions 
that seem strange are not infrequently held 
by able men ; ideas that appear to one man 
absurd, another mind sincerely adopts as the 
truth, and reasons in their support with inge- 
nuity and vigor, if not with prevailing force. 
Further, deep and devout minds recognize, 
under cover of the word miracle, a reality 
which they think rightly lies close to the 
pious heart. " Deep has been and is the sig- 
nificance of miracles," says Carlyle, "far 
deeper than we imagine. Meanwhile, the ques- 
tion of questions were : What is a miracle ? 
To that Dutch King of Siam an icicle had 
been a miracle ; whoso had carried with him 
an air-pump, and a vial of vitriolic ether, 
might have worked a miracle. To my horse, 
again, who unhappily is still more unscien- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 13 

tific, do I not work a miracle, and magical 
€ open sesame ' every time I please to pay two 
pence and open for him an impassable schlag- 
baum or shut turnpike? Innumerable are the 
illusions and legerdemain-tricks o£ custom ; 
but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her 
knack of persuading us that the miraculous, 
by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous. 
Am I to view the stupendous with stupid 
indifference because I have seen it twice or 
two hundred or two million times ? " * 

In dealing with a subject so invested with 
interest and so bound up with great beliefs, 
it would seem to be unprofitable to linger 
upon the Latin and Greek equivalents to our 
English words miracle, wonder, and sign,' 
These Latin and Greek terms present the 
striking events; they contain hints of the 
origin and intent of these events ; they do 
not supply a rational account of them or re- 
late them to the rest of human experience. 
The longer one considers the question of mir- 
acle, the more complex it appears to be, the 

1 Sartor Resartus, " Natural Supernaturalism." 



14 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

louder the call for the separation of the real 
from the unreal, the debatable from the ob- 
vious, the homogeneous and acceptable from 
the alien and uncertain. Perhaps clearness 
and satisfaction may be best pursued along 
the line of example, discrimination, definition, 
and inference. 

Examples of miraculous events are the first 
necessity. In the Old Testament we do not 
come upon these events till we arrive at the 
Book of Exodus. The human world presented 
in Genesis is remarkable for order, depth, 
pathos, intellectual and moral sobriety ; in its 
main features it is a world that answers to our 
own. Our serpents do not speak, it is true, 
our old men do not attain to the ripe age of 
the antediluvians, our views as to the origin 
of the varieties of human speech may not 
agree with the author of the Babel story; but 
on the whole, Genesis presents a world of 
men that comes close to the heart of to-day. 

When we touch the great career of Moses, 
we come upon unusual events. His rod thrown 
upon the ground becomes a serpent ; this 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 15 

serpent taken by the tail again becomes a rod. 
The change is in response to the Divine voli- 
tion. The rod retains this potency, it remains 
responsive to the Divine will expressed through 
Moses. When he meets the Egyptian magi- 
cians, his rod becomes a real serpent and 
swallows their sham serpents. Again in answer 
to the Divine volition, the hand of this leader 
is smitten with leprosy; in another moment, 
by the same will, it is restored to its normal, 
healthy state. The emancipator of Israel di- 
vides the Red Sea by stretching forth his rod 
over the waters ; by the same instrument he 
brings water from the rock. The entire series 
of events has its rational explanation in the 
will of Jehovah. The course of nature does 
not go in this way; the will of God alone 
accounts for this new and amazing result. 

In the Book of Joshua there is the record of 
perhaps the greatest of all miracles, expressed 
in words that are among the most beautiful : 

" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ; and 
thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. . . . 

"And the sun stood still in the midst of 



16 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

heaven, and hasted not to go down about a 
whole day." 

This stupendous event was in answer to the 
word of Joshua ; he needed more time for 
the total rout of the enemy. 

The meaning of the fall of Jericho at the 
blast of the ram's horn may be fairly well 
represented in the use that Carlyle makes of 
it to illustrate the fall of the Bastile. 

Two more examples will perhaps be suffi- 
cient as an induction. Let these be chosen from 
the Book of the Kings. The story of the 
victory of the fire over the water in the sacri- 
fice of Elijah is the story of the conquest of 
Jehovah over Baal. We are not, of course, to 
think of the symbolic use of the story ; we are 
to look at it as a question of fact. The other 
miracle to which I referred occurred at the 
burial of Elisha. When the body of this pro- 
phet was laid in its sepulchre, a dead Moabite 
happened to be placed in the same sepulchre, 
and on touching the bones of Elisha this per- 
son recovered life and stood upon his feet. We 
have been so accustomed to the use of these 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 17 

stories as parables of the spiritual life, that 
we have forgotten the issue of fact and of 
faith which they raise. 

We are now ready, it would seem, for dis- 
crimination of miracle from miracle, and for 
some sort of classification. Here let us take 
the miracles recorded in the Gospels, These 
may be divided into three classes : the relative 
miracle, the psychological miracle, and the 
real miracle. In the class of relative miracles 
may be placed all the cures of diseases of the 
body and of disorders of the mind wrought by 
Jesus. Here, too, may be put the reanimation 
of the daughter of Jairus and the son of the 
widow of Nain. It is not clear that these per- 
sons were dead ; they were believed to be dead, 
but this may have been a mistake. In the case 
of Jairus's daughter this view would seem to 
have been that of Jesus : " She is not dead, 
but sleepeth." 

Schleiermacher's phrase " relative miracles" 
would seem to be applicable to these events ; 
that is, they were brought to pass by a power 
that appeared to the witnesses to suspend the 



18 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

usual course of nature and to contradict it ; 
while in fact they were wrought by a Divine 
insight that made use of the hidden forces in 
nature responsive to the superior human mind. 
The relation of mind to the natural order here 
suggested is full of interest ; miracles of this 
relative class may well be deemed part, the 
most significant part, of a progressive civiliza- 
tion. If the possibilities of the quack at this 
point are fearful to contemplate, the possibili- 
ties of superior knowledge and insight carry 
immeasurable cheer to suffering mortals. 

The psychological miracle may find one of 
its examples in sudden conversion from evil 
ways to good, in the rapid and total change 
of one's thought of the world, and one's atti- 
tude toward it. The most impressive example 
in the New Testament of this type of the 
psychological miracle is the case of Saul of 
Tarsus. His mind underwent a revolution in 
relation to the person and cause of Jesus of 
Nazareth ; this revolution seemed to be sud- 
den, a bolt from a clear sky, wholly unex- 
pected so far as we can see ; and the subject 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 19 

of it ascribed it with passionate strength 
of conviction to his vision of Jesus. Many- 
such psychological miracles are recorded in 
Christian history, due in part, perhaps, to 
the sudden contact of a pure Christianity and 
a sincere but pagan mind. What is needed 
to-day is the psychological miracle in whole- 
sale abundance. If the pagan mind of to-day, 
built upon practical atheism and inhumanity, 
could undergo a revolution similar to that of 
Paul, it would be a welcome witness to the 
reality of the spirit in man and in the uni- 
verse. If a few hundred multi-millionaires 
who make havoc of the natural resources of 
the nation, who disregard right where they 
have might, with whom the summum bonum 
is the god of this world, and for whom mercy 
and the higher humanities are mere sentiment 
and moonshine, could be struck down on their 
fateful journeys, and, in the wreck of their 
soulless and savage materialism, awake to the 
heavenly vision and to steadfast obedience to 
it, a special chapter in Christian apologetics 
would be written to provide for the wonder 



20 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

and as a token of gratitude for it. It was this 
aspect of man's world that made Luther re- 
gard the revolution by which a mind passes 
from sin to holiness as more amazing than any- 
other class of wonders. We need only add that 
in the constitution of man as spirit, as a sinful 
spirit trying to live out a contradiction, and 
the glory of the Christian ideal, instinct as it 
is with the fires of the Eternal spirit, there 
would seem to be provision for this kind of 
wonder in endless continuance. 

Paul's vision of Jesus is the psychological 
miracle that seems to many the greatest puzzle. 
Was it a vision of the eye of sense or of the 
eye of the soul ? If it was a vision of the out- 
ward eye, without the appearance of a bodily 
Jesus, it would seem to be an illusion ; if it 
was a vision of the inward eye, the explana- 
tion lies in the presence in Paul's conscious- 
ness of the dynamic and spiritual Jesus. And 
this seems to me to have been the nature of 
the phenomenon. As such it does not appear 
to be inconsistent with the known order of 
the human mind. I can imagine a soul in the 






THE ISSUE DEFINED 21 

unseen taking possession of a soul in time, 
winning its consent to become the organ of 
expression of that pure spirit. I can imagine 
the soul of my dead father taking possession 
of my mind with such intensity as to make 
me know that it was he who was holding 
me, to win my consent to become the organ 
of his self-expression, to employ my brain in 
the utterance of his thoughts and my hand 
in writing his name. I have never had an 
experience like this, but I conceive it to be 
clearly possible. It is therefore clearly pos- 
sible that the spirit of Jesus took possession 
of the consciousness of Paul with such in- 
tensity and definiteness as to make Paul abso- 
lutely certain of the Lord's presence with him 
and his purpose concerning him. Such an as- 
surance grounded upon the fact of a dynamic 
and spiritual manifestation of Jesus could be 
expressed in terms of the senses. It was as if 
Jesus stood in the field of sensuous vision ; 
it was as if his voice had been heard by the 
outward ear. In such an experience of the 
reality of the risen Lord there is nothing in- 



22 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

consistent with the normal order of the human 
mind ; such an experience has many analogies 
in the ideas of absent friends or of kindred 
in the unseen ; and while these analogies are 
faint, they nevertheless support the abstract 
possibility of the case. Paul's conviction of 
the risen Lord is the issue of a spiritual ex- 
perience in which as cause the spiritual Jesus 
was present. 

There is indeed nothing contrary to the 
laws of the human mind as we know them in 
the idea of intercommunication between souls 
in the unseen and souls in time. Such inter- 
communication is not a question of possibility ; 
it is purely a question of fact. It may well be 
that in coming generations the unseen world 
shall break into time in perpetual exchanges 
of thought and concern. If the history of the 
expansion of human knowledge calls for any 
one thing more than another, that one thing 
is an open and an expectant mind. It is not 
too much for Christian men who believe in 
the coming of the Holy Ghost to hope for an 
indefinite expansion of the range of spiritual 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 23 

experience, and the repetition within it as 
a habitual thing of the solitary consciousness 
of supreme spirits in other and earlier days. 
In any event, here as elsewhere, reasonable 
thought will appeal to fact; it will decide 
such questions upon nothing but fact. 

There is still another psychological miracle 
that appears to many to be so stupendous as 
to make all other wonders tame and common- 
place. I refer to the sinlessness of Jesus. I 
confess that in a world ruled by Almighty love, 
in a soul made for the life of love, this wonder 
of sinlessness is nothing more than one might 
expect. The wonder is that sinless human be- 
ings are so few. On the supposition that God 
made and that he rules our world, that he made 
man for the life of perfect love, the opinion 
that God has been able to furnish, in all time, 
but one instance of the successful education 
of a soul in holiness seems to me about as near 
either to blasphemy or despair as a thinker 
can come. Would it in the least dim the su- 
preme splendor of the character of Jesus if 
a thousand souls should be found to-day living 



24 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

wholly in the power of the Holy Spirit? Is 
the universal failure of God to keep from sin 
and to train in holiness the souls that he created 
for this end offset by the one sovereign excep- 
tion of Jesus ? For myself, I accept the sin- 
lessness of Jesus in the strictest and deepest 
sense of the word ; and in doing so I seem to 
hold to the most natural thing in a world con- 
stituted and governed as I believe our world 
to be. I should be grieved to think that God has 
not had many servants without spot or blemish, 
and I consider the mystery to be that in God's 
world sinless souls are so comparatively few. 
There remains the real miracle, the event 
that cannot be accounted for in accordance 
with the forces of nature and the mind of 
man as we know them. Such are the nature 
miracles recorded in the Old and New Tes- 
taments. The feeding of five thousand men 
with five loaves and two fishes, the stilling of 
the storm, the walking upon the tempestuous 
sea, the causing to wither at a word the barren 
fig tree, and the raising of the dead Lazarus 
are plainly contrary to the course of nature 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 25 

as we know it. If these recorded events are 
true, they plainly have no analogy in our ex- 
perience. It is this small remainder in the 
Gospels of real miracle that constitutes the 
problem for discussion. With the relative 
miracle and the psychological no insuperable 
difficulty exists for one who would explain 
such events according to the analogy of human 
experience to-day. The relative miracle is to 
be explained with reference to the mind of 
the age in which it occurred, and to the ex- 
traordinary insight and power of the person 
working the miracle. The psychological mir- 
acle is provided for in the contact of a sincere 
but pagan mind with the sovereign beauty 
and might of the Christian ideal ; it is fur- 
ther provided for in the possibility of clear in- 
ter-communication between souls in the eter- 
nal world and souls in time, and in the further 
possibility of the sinless life. The real miracle 
presents the fundamental difficulty; it is a 
plain contradiction of the order of the world 
as we know it, and therefore calls for a dif- 
ferent explanation. 



26 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

It will be convenient at this stage of our 
discussion to consider representative defini- 
tions of miracle as given both by unbelievers 
and believers. Hume's definition of miracle is 
brief and clear : a miracle is a violation of 
the laws of nature. Experience has led man- 
kind to observe a certain steady custom or 
habit in nature. These customs or habits are 
what we mean when we use the term law of 
nature. A miracle is an event which runs 
counter to these customs or habits; it is, 
therefore, a violation of the laws of nature. 

Hume's disciple, John Stuart Mill, discusses 
the question of miracle with far greater fair- 
ness and maturity than his master. Still, Mill 
is, in the main, in accord with Hume in the 
view that he takes of the nature of a mira- 
cle. " To constitute a miracle, a phenomenon 
must take place without having been preceded 
by any antecedent phenomenal conditions 
sufficient again to reproduce it. The test of a 
miracle is : were there present in the case such 
external conditions, such second causes as we 
may call them, that whenever these conditions 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 27 

or causes reappear the event will be repro- 
duced ? If there were, it is not a miracle ; i£ 
there were not, it is a miracle, but it is not 
according to law ; it is an event produced 
without, or in spite of law." 1 Mill adds to 
this abstract statement the following example : 
" A person professing to be divinely commis- 
sioned, cures a sick person, by some apparently 
insignificant external application. Would this 
application, administered by a person not spe- 
cially commissioned from above, have effected 
the cure? If so, there is no miracle ; if not, 
there is a miracle, but there is a violation of 
law." 2 

Mill allows that human volition has power 
over nature to bring to pass results which na- 
ture alone cannot produce ; but he adds that 
for this interference with the course of nature 
we have the direct evidence of perception, and 
that such interference is always through the 
use of means. In the case of the Deity his in- 
terference is more or less a matter of specula- 

1 Essays on Religion, pp. 224-225. 

2 Essays on Religion, p. 226. 



28 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

tive inference, and his will is conceived to 
work the miracle without the aid of means. 

When we turn to the believers in miracle, 
we find many of the most famous of them 
unwilling to admit that the miraculous event 
is a contradiction or violation of natural law. 
In reply to the statement of Celsus that God 
does not will anything " contrary to nature/' 
Origen observes that there may be things done 
by God which, while not contrary to nature, 
are " above nature." Augustine occupies the 
same position. " We say," he remarks, " not 
without propriety, that God does something 
which is contrary to nature, when it is con- 
trary to the course of the nature known to us." 
When God does anything contrary to the course 
of nature in this limited sense, we call it a mira- 
cle. " But against that highest law of nature 
which lies equally beyond the knowledge of the 
ungodly and of the yet simple, God is as little 
capable of doing anything as he is of acting 
against himself." According to Augustine, our 
whole time-world is the progressive realization 
of an eternal ideal-world, and the ordinary 




THE ISSUE DEFINED 29 

course of nature and the miraculous are ser- 
vants of this advancing kingdom of the ideal. 
Thomas Aquinas follows Origen in his defini- 
tion of a miracle as an event not contrary to 
nature, but beyond or above nature. The idea 
present to the minds of these thinkers would 
seem to be that nature considered as a mechan- 
ism apart from God appears to be contradicted 
in a miraculous event, but that nature taken 
in conjunction with God, as the customary 
form of his will, is not contradicted by mira- 
cle, but simply transcended. 

It is interesting to note the fact that the lead- 
ing New England divines paid little attention 
to miracle. Doubtless they sincerely accepted 
the reality of the Biblical miracle, but it lay 
outside the sphere of their profound and habit- 
ual interests. In the published writing of Ed- 
wards there is no discussion of miracle. That 
subject to his mind was evidently of minor im- 
portance. The subjects that absorbed that great 
intellect were God's end in creation, the na- 
ture of virtue, the essence and soul of religion 
as seen in religious affections, the freedom of 



30 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

the will, the history of redemption. Edwards 
was a theologian in the strict sense of the 
word ; his whole mind was absorbed with the 
absoluteness of God; in the presence of this 
supreme interest all other interests were mea- 
sured and set in the due order of their im- 
portance. So comparatively unimportant did 
miracle appear to be, that it fell outside the 
sphere of notice. 

In the works of Joseph Bellamy there is 
nothing on miracle. To this vivid and power- 
ful mind the chief interest was the perfect 
world of God and the possibility of the perfect 
human life therein. Two horrors confronted the 
intellect of Bellamy : sin as the impeachment 
of the character of God, and sin as the misery 
of the human soul. The first horror gave rise 
to the daring speculative views of this preacher; 
the second horror introduced him to the essen- 
tial soul of Christianity as the religion of re- 
demption from sin. In comparison with the 
depth and the daring of such conceptions of 
religion, how poor and shallow seem to be the 
devotion to externals and the intoxication with 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 31 

them characteristic of many preachers in every 
age. 

The younger Edwards has nothing to say 
on miracle. He is concerned with the moral 
peril contained in Universalism, with the na- 
ture of the atonement, and with the applica- 
tion of Christianity to the life of the nation. 
Samuel Hopkins published nothing on mira- 
cle. He, like his predecessors, is concerned 
with the nature of man as a natural and as a 
spiritual being, and with the ideas of God and 
the universe brought forth in the Christian 
religion. He is at his best in his great treatise 
on holiness, in which he repeats with a power 
and charm all his own the sublime idealism of 
Jonathan Edwards. 

Nathaniel Emmons published his sermons in 
seven volumes. In substance and in form they 
are worthy of his great reputation for clear- 
ness and intellectual power. They remain stim- 
ulating, and in many instances illuminating, 
reading to this day, in spite of all the changes 
that have overtaken the habit of the religious 
mind. In these seven volumes there are but two 



32 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

sermons devoted to the discussion of miracle, 
a fact that would seem to show the relative 
unimportance of miracle to this preacher. The 
sermons in question are clear and vigorous, as 
we should expect the sermons of Emmons to 
be; but he does not appear at home in the 
discussion. He is at his best in dealing with 
the Supreme Being as the only object of wor- 
ship, the agency of God as universal, in his 
presentation of Christ as the standard for 
preachers, in his plea for the " Dignity of 
Man " more than thirty years before Chan- 
ning spoke on the same theme, in his defense 
of " Rational Preaching," and in his appeal to 
" Feeble-Minded Christians," a discourse which 
might with great profit be republished and is- 
sued as a tract for the times. 

The same limitation is to be observed in the 
published writings of Nathaniel W. Taylor. 
His great work is that on Moral Government, 
which carries the mind into a region of ideas 
of the utmost moment to faith in the moral 
Deity and to believers in the religion of Jesus 
Christ as the sovereign expression of the 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 33 

Divine conscience and the sovereign appeal to 
the moral being of man. Dr. Taylor's theology- 
stands published in one large volume, and again 
we have no attention paid to miracle. The four 
subjects treated in this volume are the Trinity, 
Human Sinfulness, Justification, and Election. 
We have a volume of sermons from Dr. Taylor, 
but among the thirty-two discourses selected 
from his ministry of ten years in the Centre 
Church, New Haven, there is not one devoted 
to miracle. Many of these sermons were pre- 
pared to meet a state of deep religious interest 
in his congregation; another illuminating fact. 
Not till we come to the last generation of 
the school of the New England divines do we 
find an elaborate treatment of miracle. Bush- 
nell belongs much more in the region of the 
supernatural than in that of the miraculous. 
Professor Park, in a discussion that is a dia- 
lectical work of art, and, like all works of art, 
is exempt from utilitarian standards, states 
that a miracle is a violation of the laws of 
nature, but not of all the laws of nature. As 
I have found it difficult to be sure of Pro- 



34 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

fessor Park's meaning, I pursue the subject 
no further, only commending his discussion to 
the consideration of others. 1 

I must repeat that all these thinkers be- 
lieved in the reality of the Biblical miracle. 
That the miracle was a matter of minor im- 
portance is an inference justified by the neglect 
of it in their published writings. The propor- 
tion of faith may indeed change with the 
times ; a new perspective of values may be- 
come necessary. Still, for the descendants and 
successors of these mighty men of old who 
belong as Christian theologians in a class by 
themselves, with only here and there a soli- 
tary mind large enough to be added to their 
number since the close of the fifth century of 
our era, it must be significant and reassuring 
to discover where the emphasis was laid by 
them. Miracle counted for so little that it 
could be counted out; the ideas and the life 
of faith counted so much that they could be 
made, with propriety, to occupy the entire 
field of living thought. 

1 Smith's Bible Dictionary, article on " Miracles," n. 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 35 

Although he devotes practically no atten- 
tion to the subject, one o£ the clearest defini- 
tions of miracle, on the side of belief, that I 
have been able to find, is that by Dr. Samuel 
Harris. "A miracle," writes Dr. Harris, "im- 
plies no suspension of the law of causation, 
or of the law that the same combination of 
causes always produces the same effect. In a 
miracle the sequence is interrupted only by a 
new cause adequate to produce the new effect." 
Dr. Harris adds an element of surprise to the 
discussion when he says that the conception 
of God as immanent in the universe is favor- 
able to belief in miracle. 1 

This reference to the debate upon miracle 
would not be as wide as it should be if it 
did not cite the clear and explicit definition 
of miracle given by the elder Dr. Hodge of 
Princeton. "A miracle may be defined as an 
event in the external world, brought about by 
the immediate efficiency or simple volition of 
God." 2 If my memory serves me, the younger 

1 God, Creator and Lord, vol. ii, pp. 485-486. 

2 Works, vol. i, p. 618. 



36 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Dr. Hodge added to this definition the clause 
that the event in question must be performed 
or witnessed by the bearer of a message from 
God, and it must be in attestation of the truth 
of this message. 

When we turn to British opinion, we are 
struck with the slight regard paid to miracle 
by the leaders who were distinguished either 
for religious vitality or spiritual depth. Kings- 
ley, Stanley, Robertson, Maurice, and Cole- 
ridge contribute little or nothing to the dis- 
cussion of the miraculous. In the voluminous 
writings of Maurice I recall but one signifi- 
cant reference to miracle. In "The Kingdom 
of Christ " Maurice pleads for miracle as the 
interpreter of the law of nature ; the Divine 
volition which is made evident in the miracle 
is shown to be the source of the fixed order 
of nature. Without this interpreter of the 
ordinary course of the world, Maurice thinks 
that men would sink into submission to na- 
ture as mere mechanism and soulless tyranny. 
" We confess," Maurice writes, " and rejoice 
to confess, that there is an habitual appointed 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 37 

course of things; that each agent, voluntary 
or involuntary, has his proper place in the 
scheme ; that no one link of this agency will 
be ever needlessly broken or dispensed with. 
But we say that no dishonor is put upon any of 
these agents, when he who has assigned them 
their place keeps them in their own relation 
to each other, imparts to them their powers, 
withdraws the veil which conceals himself the 
prime worker, and so explains the meaning of 
his ordinances, the secret of their efficiency, 
the reason of their abuse." * 

From our facts and definitions some useful 
inferences may perhaps now be drawn. The 
first and the most important of these would 
seem to be that miracle and the supernatural 
are by no means identical. Nor is it enough, 
in the way of distinction of the one from the 
other, to say that the supernatural is the 
genus and the miraculous the species. For 
the believer in miracle, it is doubtless true 
that the miraculous is related to the super- 
natural as the particular to the universal. But 

1 The Kingdom of Christ, vol. ii, pp. 207-208. 



38 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

for the unbeliever in miracle and for the ag- 
nostic mood toward it, the supernatural stands 
fast if faith in God abides. The supernatural 
means the presence in the sequences of nature 
and the thoughts of men of one other than 
they, who includes them in his world-plan, 
and employs them for the realization of his 
purpose ; it means the presence of the Eternal 
Spirit in the cosmos and in man. Spirit is the 
note of the supernatural, spirit as thought 
and love and worth, spirit as entertaining 
ideal ends and seeking their realization, spirit 
as the life and power above nature and in 
control of nature, cosmic and human, for its 
own perfect ends. The question of miracle 
does not go to the heart of the subject ; it 
does not deal with the existence of the Eter- 
nal Spirit, it concerns itself with the modes 
in which God utters himself in the external 
world in its relation to human beings. The 
supernatural is essential to miracle ; miracle is 
not essential to the supernatural. That Moses 
may represent God to his people as they groan 
under Egyptian bondage and appeal to heaven, 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 39 

God must exist, and exist in the courses of 
nature and human life ; but that Moses should 
express the Divine sympathy with Israel and 
his purpose of salvation through miracle 
rather than through the usual order of the 
world, while possibly, is not necessarily, the 
case. In the order of the body the human 
spirit thinks, resolves, and acts ; in the order 
of the cosmos the Divine spirit thinks and 
wills ; through this order, cosmic and human, 
the soul of man and the soul of God meet as 
in prayer and worship ; and thus man lives a 
life above nature ; he becomes a supernatural 
being in the life of the supernatural Deity, I 
seem to myself to be a thoroughgoing super- 
naturalist. 

Another inference that our previous discus- 
sion would seem to warrant is that miracle 
does not mean that the non-miraculous is de- 
void of the Divine volition. It was said many 
years ago by a famous and honored preacher 
that if we give up Jonah and the whale, we 
must give up Jesus and his gospel. A pro- 
found and brilliant contemporary described 



40 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

this preacher as "a glorious simpleton, an 
inspired ignoramus, a divine idiot, with the 
emphasis sometimes upon the adjective and 
sometimes upon the noun." If this preacher 
has any followers in our time, they may be in- 
cluded in the characterization of their prophet. 
The philosophical advocate of miracle could 
be guilty of no such blunder as the identifi- 
cation of wonder with God, and of infinite 
worth with the absence of God. He sees that 
God does not confine the presence and ex- 
pression of his will to the miraculous. All 
nature lies in God's will ; his purpose is pre- 
sent at every point of space and in every 
moment of time ; his ideal for the cosmos and 
for man exerts its power, in different ways, of 
course, in each case, with unceasing persist- 
ence over the entire breadth of being. Such 
is the tremendous nearness of God to man 
given in the doctrine of the sovereignty of 
the Divine will ; the New England advocates 
of this doctrine have imparted to our churches 
a consciousness of God in the ordinary 
courses of the world of the highest moment. 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 41 

In the case of clear thinkers who believe in 
miracle, the alternative is never between a 
small group o£ stupendous events carrying 
in them the immediate volition o£ God and 
an immeasurable range of customary events 
empty of all but a remote reference to the 
Divine will. It would seem to be clear that 
in reference to the volition of God in man's 
world there is no difference between the mi- 
raculous and the usual order ; both present, 
and present with immediateness, the Divine 
will. 

A third inference is clear. It is clear that 
the denial of miracle does not mean that 
human volition cannot modify the course of 
nature and bring into existence results which 
nature left to herself could not produce. Such 
modifications, such results, are matters of fact. 
The power of steam and electricity and a 
hundred different inventions are examples in 
the inanimate world; the improvement of 
domestic animals like the horse and the dog, 
by artificial breeding, is an illustration in the 
realm of life of man's power over nature. The 



42 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

sphere in which the human will is potent is 
large, and it is continually growing. Indeed, 
there would appear to be no assignable limit 
to the extension of the power of the human 
will over nature by means of nature. To deny 
this influence of man over the mere courses 
of the cosmos is vain ; to assert that it is mi- 
raculous is a sort of self -imposture. The mira- 
cles of modern surgery are done by means of 
the knowledge of nature, and in reliance upon 
nature's power. Aerial navigation is upon the 
same principle ; the surprising achievement 
may be said to come from an enlightened 
obedience to nature. Nor is there any doubt 
for the believer in God, that in this new na- 
ture, so to speak, evolved by the will of man, 
the will of God is present and efficient both 
as objective possibility and subjective illumi- 
nation. Nor will any modern agnostic in re- 
gard to miracle set limits to the control that 
God may thus exert over the established order 
of his world. 

The further inference is obvious, that many 
believers in miracles in reality explain them 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 43 

away. The naturalization of the miraculous is 
a constant phenomenon in recent discussions 
of the subject. So far as the purpose is to 
vindicate the essential integrity of the Gospel 
narrative, I heartily sympathize with this en- 
deavor. The distinction between the relative 
miracle and the real has its value here. What 
then seemed to be wholly at variance with 
nature may turn out to be, to minds more 
enlightened concerning nature, entirely in 
accord with it. When, however, this natural- 
ization of miracle is used as a proof of the 
miracle that is clearly against nature, it must 
be deplored. The natural miracle is, by the 
supposition, no miracle at all. When every 
prophet of the Lord can raise a dead child, 
the achievement of Elijah will cease to be an 
unusual event; when a dead body brought 
into contact with the bones of any modern 
prophet starts to life, the marvel related of 
Elisha loses its singularity. If by increase of 
knowledge these things should some day be- 
come universal possibilities, it would then be 
clear that they have been universal possibili- 



44 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ties, hidden in the relations of nature and 
man, from the beginning, and therefore with- 
out special significance of God's presence in 
the world. 

The conclusion would seem to be that the 
value of miracle is wholly relative to man as 
an impressionable being. Since all nature lives 
in the immediate volition of God, since the 
will of man is dependent for its efficiency upon 
the Divine efficiency, since the Eternal Spirit 
is present at every point of space and in every 
moment of time in creative might, since there 
is this ceaseless and universal presentation of 
the Deity, the educational value of miracle 
would seem to be its only value. It nowhere 
gives anything new ; it is a new way of pre- 
senting the old, the Eternal. 

This pedagogical argument for miracle 
should be understood and treated w r ith re- 
spect. God is man's teacher ; man is a dull and 
often a sense-bound pupil. The miracle is the 
teacher's accommodation to the needs of the 
pupil, in the subrational stages of his educa- 
tion. The intent of miracle, according to this 



\ 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 45 

argument, is to lift the pupil to a plane of 
enlightenment where it will be no longer 
necessary. That there is room for this sort of 
teaching it would seem rash to deny ; that it 
would surely accomplish the results aimed at 
is perhaps open to question. Nevertheless, it 
is a gain to see clearly that the affirmation of 
miracle does not mean the exclusion of God 
from the customary order of the world ; and 
that since God is actively omnipresent in the 
cosmos and in man, the miraculous can be 
nothing more than an accommodation to 
human weakness, an august, a divine sensa- 
tionalism. 

From this consideration of miracle we turn 
to our main purpose. We are to concede the 
non-reality of miracle understood to be a viola- 
tion of natural law, and to consider the bearing 
of this concession upon the reality of reli- 
gion. The concession is made, however, with 
the logical reservations about to be named. 

The reality of miracle has been under sus- 
picion among educated minds in all ages. The 
denial of the reality of miracle is nothing new 



46 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

under the sun. For the Greek at his maturity 
the universe was a cosmos, an invariable order, 
the object of scientific study and confidence. 
In the scientific activity of Aristotle we do 
not meet with miracle. Portents may puzzle 
and interrupt the thinker, but they in no way 
disturb his confidence in the general order of 
cause and effect. For Spinoza miracles have 
no more worth than they possess for Hume. 
These examples suggest an unbroken succes- 
sion of thinkers from the earliest times to our 
own day to whom miracle has been no part of 
our historic world. If, therefore, the suspicion 
of miracle that to-day works in so many minds 
were nothing but a new version of an old 
feeling, if it came from the same quarter from 
which this feeling has come in every genera- 
tion since men began to think, it would not 
be of so much moment. For hitherto the 
suspicion of the reality of miracle has come 
largely from thinkers outside the pale of or- 
ganized Christianity. Their conclusions were 
part of their philosophy of the world ; as their 
philosophy was foreign, so their conclusions 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 47 

respecting miracles were foreign, to the faith 
of the Christian church. 

The significance of the new question con- 
cerning miracle is that it comes from pro- 
foundly religious men, and from men living 
and potent within the Christian church. It is 
a new discussion that we face when the dis- 
ciples of Jesus Christ in this twentieth century 
ask, Is miracle essential to religion ? Is mira- 
cle a genuine part of the authentic record of 
any true religion? Is the essential truth of 
Christianity dependent upon the reality of the 
miracles embedded in the evangelical history ? 
Is the message of Jesus Christ to man separa- 
ble from the record of signs and wonders with 
which it is accompanied ? Scientific men, in 
so far as they are under the scientific spirit, 
see no miracles, that is, they note no viola- 
tions of the order of cause and effect ; they 
expect to meet with no violations of this order ; 
they believe in none. For them the miracles 
of all the religions are the interesting pro- 
ducts of human imagination ; they are a chap- 
ter in the serious fiction of the world. May 



48 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

a member of the Christian church, may a 
preacher of the Christian gospel, in any de- 
gree sympathize with the attitude of scientific 
men toward miracle, and yet remain loyal to 
his great Master ? These are questions work- 
ing to-day in the religious mind wherever that 
mind has obtained a modern education. These 
questions finally reduce themselves to three : 
Under what conception of the universe do edu- 
cated freemen think to-day ? What is the lo- 
gical value of this conception ? How far does 
the principle of verification lead us in this dis- 
cussion ? 

in 

Our first question then is, Under what con- 
ception of the universe do educated freemen 
think in our day ? It is not enough to answer, 
Under the conception of law. There has been 
in the world from the earliest time the idea of 
fate. It lives in some of the oldest of religions, 
as in the Karma of Buddhism, transfigured, 
indeed, by its ethical import. In Greek reli- 
gion the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, 
were the daughters of Themis, the supreme 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 49 

Fate, upon which the throne of Zeus was 
built. The idea of fate has been wrought into 
a thousand poetic forms, from the Sophoclean 
drama to the great poem of Lucretius, from 
Omar Khayyam to the "City of Dreadful 
Night." It has been the leading idea in many 
imposing systems of thought in our modern 
world ; it is the leading idea in the work of 
Spinoza, Calvin, and Spencer. Indeed, it may 
be said that whenever thinkers have come 
under the exclusive sway of the idea of the 
One, they have regarded the world of the many 
as its fated expression. Both in religion and 
in philosophy, from the earliest time, this has 
taken place. When men become enamored of 
the One, the Whole, the Eternal, they treat 
without mercy the finite world of persons and 
their acts, their character, their fortunes. 
Here we have the conception of an invariable 
order arrived at by speculation and then car- 
ried down to the last detail of existence either 
by the poetic imagination, as in the case of 
Lucretius, or by the steps of deductive logic, 
as in the ethics of Spinoza. In a sense Pro- 



50 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

testants have been bred under this aspect of 
the universe. Predestination is a governing 
idea in Paul, and this apostle is the patron 
thinker of the Reformers. Predestination in 
Paul is turning out to be, under free study, a 
doctrine of hope for the whole race ; still, as 
set forth by John Calvin, his great disciple in 
the sixteenth century, it had all the hardness 
and horror of fate. For, according to Melanc- 
thon, who was a good judge, Calvin and Zeno 
teach the same doctrine. Life under this fatal- 
istic idea of things has been a stern discipline. 
It has prepared us to look any system of opin- 
ion in the face without fear. The necessity 
laid upon us was by no means benign ; it was 
laid upon us by deductive thought and by the 
poetic imagination. 

The sense of order in nature was strong 
among the science-loving Greeks. Their great- 
est thinker united the capacity for the widest 
generalizations with the keenest interest in the 
concrete world of man. Aristotle speaks for 
the higher mind of his race when he says : 
" From the facts of the case, Nature does not 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 51 

appear to be incoherent like a badly planned 
tragedy S " ! Here is the emergence of the scien- 
tific conception of the invariable order of na- 
ture. It may be in some respects very much 
like the speculative conception, but it is unlike 
it in two important particulars. It is arrived 
at not by deduction, but by induction ; it is in 
consequence a sure possession of the human 
mind. Consider for a moment these two par- 
ticulars. From exact experimental study in 
chemistry, physics, botany, biology, physi- 
ology, psychology, the natural, ethical, and 
political history of man, the idea of order, 
which is the presupposition of all science, has 
risen up verified, attested. Here is a contrast 
to the old method whereby the sense of fate 
was fixed in human society. Predestination is 
not proved by induction ; fate is a doctrine 
that has not been established inductively. The 
method of science is from facts and their ob- 
served behavior to laws and their invariable 
operation ; the method of predestination and 
fatalism has been from the most general ideas 
1 Meta. M. 4. 



V 



52 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

of the human mind down to the facts that are 
crushed under those ideas, and that are not 
allowed to tell their own story. Jesus noting 
the fallen sparrow and thence traveling to the 
Universal mind, and Newton seeing the fall- 
ing apple and moving to the apprehension of 
a universal law, illustrate in a supreme way, 
in religion and in cosmic study, the scientific 
spirit. The method is from fact to law, from 
life to the Supreme life. If it be said that the 
history of Jesus is the reverse of this method, 
that in him we have a descent from the Eter- 
nal to an individual life in the fields of time, 
the reply is that this is indeed the history of 
all reality, cosmic and human. Creation is the 
movement of the Infinite forth from himself 
into the particular worlds of space and time. 
It is therefore true of all life, of all creation, 
of all human beings, including Jesus Christ, 
that the history of reality is from the eternal 
to the temporal. But the history of the way 
in which man traces the cosmos to its final 
meaning, the history of the way in which man 
moves to the knowledge of himself as of con- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 53 

cern to the Infinite, is from fact to law, from 
living soul to the living God, The descent of 
Jesus Christ into time was availing only as it 
became in his self-conscious soul an ascent 
back to God. The fullness of his self-con- 
sciousness at the Baptism would seem to mean 
this. Over the path in which God had de- 
scended into his soul he ascended into the 
soul of God. If the method of creation be a 
deduction from the Infinite life to the finite, 
the method of sure human knowledge is the 
reversal of that method. It is an induction 
from fact to principle, from particular to uni- 
versal, from man to God. 

This contrast in method by which specula- 
tion and scientific thought arrive at the idea 
of a universal order issues in another contrast 
of even greater moment. Of the old specula- 
tive idea of fate it is possible to say that it is 
a thing in the air; that it is in a region where 
the human intellect is incompetent; that it is 
a mere dream when set against the facts of 
man's life. Professor Park used to recall to 
his students the New England farmer who 



54 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

got into a puzzle over his endeavor to outwit 
the Infinite and to take that one of the two 
roads home from the mill over which God had 
not predestined him to go, and who took him- 
self out of this puzzle by the wholesome con- 
fession, " God decreed that I should be a 
fool." The grip of an idea that rises up out 
of fact cannot thus be undone. When an in- 
variable order of sequence rises up out of the 
exact research of mankind, when this order is 
established by an induction as wide as that 
covered by exact research, the conception at- 
tained cannot be abandoned at will or over- 
thrown by the agnostic sentiment. It abides 
as part of the surest possessions of the human 
mind. The idea of the fixed order of nature 
is indeed an assumption ; it is an assumption 
to which man is incapable of giving universal 
and absolute verification ; still, this assump- 
tion receives verification and no contradiction 
over the entire field of contemporary science. 
So far it is as sure as anything human can 
well be. 

The conception of the fixedness of the natu- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 55 

ral order is to-day dominant among freemen. 
Where men think and think freely they are 
inclined to rest in the universal and invariable 
reign of law. In the heavens above, in the 
earth beneath, and in the waters under the 
earth cause and effect rule with absolute au- 
thority. There are no effects without causes ; 
like effects come from like causes. In the 
realm of nature this order is constant and 
inviolable. We can predict the coming of a 
storm, but we cannot avert it. We can record 
the advent of spring, but we can neither 
hasten nor arrest that advent. This view of 
the world which comes to us in a poetic way in 
the order of sunrise and sunset, the succession 
of day and night, the ebb and flow of the 
tides, the procession of the seasons, the move- 
ment of the planets, the coming and going of 
the great familiar constellations, science has 
extended through the entire domain of physi- 
cal being, so far as that being is known. 

Man's life as a physical being is under the 
same law. Life comes from life ; man is born 
of human parents. So fixed is this law that 



56 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

any other mode of bringing human life into 
the world does not even occur to a sane mind. 
Further, cause and effect are seen in all physi- 
cal disorders, in all normal waste and repair, 
in the entire process of bodily life, and in 
death. It is natural to be born, to grow, to 
attain life's prime, to decrease in strength, to 
fail and die. 

The days of our years are threescore years and ten, 
Or even by reason of strength fourscore years; 
Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow ; 
For it is soon gone, and we fly away. 

What is this but the matchless poetic ex- 
pression of the ageless and inviolable law that 
reigns in our physical existence? We marvel 
when Mr. Gladstone at the age of sixty-nine 
conducts one of the greatest political cam- 
paigns in the nineteenth century, dominating 
the mind of the nation like a king ; we marvel 
again when at the age of eighty-four he con- 
tinues the efficient head of the British govern- 
ment, but we do not expect him, on account 
of these feats, to live forever. We are confi- 
dent of the reverse. 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 57 

The mind and character of man are not ex- 
empt from law. The mind is conditioned by 
the general bodily health ; it is especially con- 
ditioned by the brain. All this is common- 
place, and the commonplace means the adjust- 
ment of the habits of our thought to the reign 
of law. We claim, indeed, the power of free 
initiative of the will. We see in the depths 
of the spirit genuine creative power, but the 
boldest champion of the freedom of human 
spirit must recognize that in the sphere of 
character, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap." Wherever science has 
gone it has found that things come to pass in 
a given way ; that they do not come to pass 
in any other way. The scientific mind natu- 
rally believes that if we knew all nature and 
all history, we should behold all things coming 
to pass in one way, and this one way invari- 
able and inviolable. 

This scientific view of the world is the ulti- 
mate source of the discredit that has fallen 
upon the miracles recorded in the Hebrew 
and Christian Scriptures. Christian scholars 



58 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

have never, in large numbers, at least in mod- 
ern times, believed in the miracles recorded in 
connection with other religions. They have 
rejected these miracles on many grounds, but 
chiefly because the order of the world is against 
them. Within a generation of human life this 
law of logic has been applied to the records 
of our own faith over its entire field, and with 
relentless vigor. Independent scholars, often 
enough with little religion of any kind, and 
frequently without discernible sympathy with 
the Hebrew or the Christian religion, have 
examined, in the scientific spirit, our Bible, 
and at every step they have found the record 
of miracles mythical or legendary, always in- 
credible as fact. The point to be noted is that 
these scholars go to their work of criticism 
with a fixed conception of what can be and of 
what cannot be. They believe that miracles do 
not occur, that they never have occurred, that 
they never will occur. They believe this in the 
name of natural science ; they look, therefore, 
from the first contact with them, upon all sto- 
ries of the miraculous as incredible and impos- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 69 

sible. In their hands, the fate of the miracu- 
lous is a foregone conclusion ; the miraculous 
goes as the landslide goes, it falls as the ava- 
lanche falls ; in the order of nature it could not 
be otherwise. 

We see at once that this type of mind is 
full of peril. We see at once that it begs the 
question at issue. Judgment is set, and the 
miraculous is ruled out of court. The ques- 
tion is not discussed, it is assumed as settled. 
A general phase of belief concerning nature, 
resting indeed upon a wide induction of facts, 
has been asserting itself for centuries. It has 
been gaining ground ; it has won, or thinks it 
has won, the day. Miracles have gone because 
the fashion of the world's intellect is against 
them. This fashion may be right, or it may 
be wrong. Discussion alone can settle that 
point, and for the present defense of the mi- 
raculous is considered either an impertinence 
or an amusement; it is further regarded as 
the infallible sign of an uneducated intellect. 
For this very reason the temper of the time is 
unfortunate. 



60 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

It is unfortunate for another reason. Hu- 
man science is strictly contemporaneous. It 
lives in verified conceptions ; and verification 
is a process carried on by the living. Human 
science is contemporaneous, and its field is 
small at that. With all possible reverence for 
the high method and the sure results of 
science, one may doubt whether it is safe for 
any man to decide beforehand what the events 
of all history or any part of it must be, what 
the possibilities and impossibilities are over 
the entire domain of universal experience. 
Laws of logic hold against men of faith ; they 
hold also against men of science. If things 
are believed that are more than doubtful, 
things are denied where the denial cannot be 
proved. There are ten thousand mysteries 
above, beneath, and round about the clearest 
and surest science. The fountains of being 
are deep; many of them are so far past find- 
ing out ; and a new face may be put upon an 
ancient faith by some sudden disclosure of the 
law of man's soul. There are more things in 
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 61 

philosophy. And while it is true that one who 
speaks in this way is but a voice crying in the 
wilderness, it is right, if only on the princi- 
ple that a persistent opposition, a Sanballat, 
a Satan, is indispensable to all sure progress, 
that the solitary voice should keep up the cry. 
Intellectual integrity is the condition of the 
integrity of knowledge ; and intellectual integ- 
rity belongs, as matter of course, to no class 
of thinkers. When the custom of thought is 
all one way, there is safety only in the persist- 
ent challenge of the custom. 

IV 

We ask, therefore, as our next question : 
What is the logical value of the scientific con- 
ception of nature ? And here the first thing 
to be said is that antecedent to experience one 
thing may as well be as another. The " Ara- 
bian Nights " do not strike the minds of chil- 
dren as impossible stories. Indeed, to such 
minds they read like veritable history. The 
magic feats of Aladdin's lamp meet with little 
or no unbelief, because little or no authentic 



62 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

experience is brought to the story. The im- 
mature mind does not know what to expect; 
one thing is therefore as credible as another, 
provided it be told with equal vividness and 
power ; a magical universe is as likely to be 
the fact, to a vacant mind, as a universe 
severe and steadfast in its ways of behavior. 
If the cosmos be supposed to be the expres- 
sion of mind, antecedent to experience, the 
magical and the ordered cosmos do not indeed 
stand upon the same level. Upon reflection 
the cosmic mind is not so likely to be a wizard 
as a logician, a lover of surprises as a lover of 
order. The cosmic mind is likely to care for 
something, and if so to observe certain rules 
in guarding the interests of that something. 
Order would seem to be essential to mind; to 
the good mind it is without doubt essential. 
If, therefore, the cosmic mind is a good mind, 
it goes without saying that even antecedent 
to experience order is more likely to be its 
general method of expression. So much must 
be said in qualification of the statement to 
be made that before the determinations of 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 63 

experience order or disorder, law or magic, 
method or madness, may be the fact. Experi- 
ence comes in to help the mind in its expecta- 
tions ; experience tells us what is, and upon 
what is we infer what has been, we predict 
what will be. We find that fire burns, that 
water at a certain temperature becomes ice, 
that in our latitude there are in the year an 
equal number of days and nights of unequal 
lengths, and from this experience we infer 
that such has been the case always, we predict 
that this order will remain to the end of time. 
The uniformity of nature is an assumption 
from partial experience for all experience 
actual and possible. 

The uniformity of nature is an assumption. 
It is an assumption to which man is incapable 
of giving complete verification. Verification, 
it must be observed, is made by the living ; 
when the verifications of preceding genera- 
tions of men are taken, they are taken on au- 
thority ; even when these verifications of men 
in past ages are re-verified by the living, in 
strict logic we are not able to say that former 



64 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

generations were exact in their method and 
result. Only the Infinite mind knows whether 
or not the assumption of the uniformity of 
nature is valid. The mind that would suffi- 
ciently attest the idea of uniformity must 
know absolutely the entire history of the cos- 
mos in relation to man, must know, too, the 
law that insures, for all time to come, an invio- 
lable order. Scientific thinkers of eminence 
recognize fully that the uniformity of nature 
is an assumption to which man is incapable of 
giving complete attestation. Dogmatic denial 
of miracle on the ground of natural law can- 
not, therefore, be justified by logic. No man 
knows enough to be able to make good the 
denial. No man knows enough to be warranted 
in the statement that miracle has never oc- 
curred in the history of man and the cosmos. 
Therefore the dogmatic negative is excluded 
from sure thinking and valid conclusions on 
this subject. 

Still it must be added that the uniformity 
of nature is a reasonable assumption. It is rea- 
sonable because ordinary experience justifies 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 65 

it, ordinary mortals find the ways of nature in- 
variable and sure. We take a walk in the coun- 
try and find essentially the same conditions 
— a stable earth, air that may be breathed. 
Mining, farming, navigation, all forms of in- 
dustry depend upon order in nature, and they 
find that order sure. The cultivation of the 
farm is set in the great uniform method of 
nature ; the heart of the earth opens its trea- 
sure under the operation of law. The sea amid 
all its wild changes serves the navigator with 
a constant character. Ordinary experience is a 
record of the uniform ways of the great world 
in which we live, and upon these uniform 
ways we build and rejoice. Science takes this 
result of ordinary experience and verifies it by 
observation and experiment over the entire 
domain of exact knowledge ; so far as science 
goes, it finds nature uniform in its behavior. 
Since this conception of the uniformity of na- 
ture is uncontradicted over the entire field of 
experiment, both ordinary and scientific, it is 
reasonable to believe that it is an uncontra- 
dicted conception over the whole range of cos- 



66 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

mic history in relation to man. This belief 
about the uniformity of nature is reasonable, 
but it is not certain. We are led by contem- 
poraneous experience to believe in the invari- 
able order of nature for all experience, but we 
cannot prove that absolute, invariable order. 
The antecedent improbability of miracle 
reduces itself to the contest between general 
experience and special experience. Quantity is 
surely against miracle. Is the quality of expe- 
rience likewise against miracle? Here men 
will differ in their judgment. The testimony 
of the eye-witness of the miracles recorded in 
the Gospels will seem to some superior, to 
other judges inferior, to the general testimony 
of mankind. The persons who deem the testi- 
mony of the apostles of Jesus superior to the 
general verdict, or who hold that the testi- 
mony is superior when taken in connection 
with the character of the Prophet of whom it 
bears witness, are usually men who believe in 
the flexibility of nature. Usually they are per- 
sons with a slight sense of natural law and a 
hi^h sense of the Supreme Being whose will is 



THE ISSUE DEFINED " 67 

expressed in natural law. These persons allow 
ideas to influence evidence; they hold that 
nature may be moved by the will of God or 
by the ambassador of God as the curtain is 
swayed by the wind, that nature may be in- 
clined this way or that as the sail is bent by 
the breeze. Minds of this order are less in- 
fluenced by the testimony of the New Testa- 
ment record than by their own ideas. For them 
the miraculous has an extreme fascination, a 
weird and divine attraction. The miraculous 
world is God's world ; he is the God of signs 
and wonders ; religion itself is a portent, and 
it is set in with portents, cosmic and psychic. 
The essence of existence, the essence of his- 
tory is surprise ; God himself is the supreme 
surprise, and he is forever taking the world 
by surprise. 

To minds of a sober cast all this seems 
painfully unreal. It represents not the work 
of serious judgment, but the riot of an irre- 
sponsible imagination. To minds possessed 
with a profound sense of natural law, who 
look upon natural law as the steady and sure 



68 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

declaration of the will of God, the miraculous 
is an intrusion if not an impertinence. It is to 
them the beginning of confusion. It is the ini- 
tial endeavor toward the transformation of the 
sublime and fixed world through which God 
covenants with men into the world of magic. 
Therefore the testimony of the disciples of 
Jesus to the miracles recorded in the Gospels 
meets, in such minds, a rooted antagonism. 
To them no testimony can prevail against an 
order that living men have never known to be 
violated. The result to which we are thus 
brought is that, while the denial of miracles 
cannot be logically sustained, the reality of 
miracles is unlikely. Miracles are logical pos- 
sibilities and natural improbabilities. 

v 

This brings me to the third question: 
What help may we expect from the principle 
of verification in the endeavor to ascertain the 
truth of our historic Christianity? Here it 
must be said that our historic faith divides 
itself into two great departments, — the verifi- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 69 

able and the unverifiable. This broad distinc- 
tion between that in our faith which is verifi- 
able and that which is not open to verification 
will be generally admitted as sound. We do not 
put in the same category the statement that Je- 
sus at the wedding in Cana of Galilee turned 
water into wine and his great words, " I am the 
light of the world : he that f olloweth me shall 
not walk in the darkness, but shall have the 
light of life." 1 The statement about the turn- 
ing of the water into wine we cannot verify ; if 
we believe it, we do so on the authority of the 
Fourth Gospel. The statement that Jesus is 
the light of the world, and that whoever follows 
him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
the light of life, is open to verification. Experi- 
ence alone can determine whether the statement 
is or is not true. There can be, therefore, no dif- 
ference of opinion concerning the validity of 
the distinction between the verifiable and the 
unverifiable in our Christian faith ; there will 
be some difference of opinion concerning what 
should be placed in the one category and what 

1 John viii, 12. 



70 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

should be placed in the other. It may not be 
always easy to determine what is and what is 
not open to verification. 

It does not follow that what is unverifiable 
is therefore untrue. All that follows is simply 
this, that where a belief is not open to verifi- 
cation we cannot hope to gain any measure of 
certainty about its truth. For example, let us 
take this statement from the Fourth Gospel : ' 
u Jesus therefore, being wearied with his jour- 
ney, sat thus by the well." It seems to me quite 
impossible from this statement to know how 
Jesus sat or where he sat. The statement is 
too indefinite for definite and sure belief ; then 
again if it had been definite, we could have 
arrived at no certainty regarding it, because it 
is inaccessible to sure tests. It may be said that 
it is of no consequence how or where he sat, his 
conversation with the woman at the well is the 
essential thing. I agree to this, but I must add 
that precisely the same ground may be taken 
with regard to all in the life of Jesus and all in 
our historic faith that is not subject to verifica- 

1 John iv, 6. 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 71 

tion. Still I repeat that because a belief is un- 
verifiable it does not follow that it is untrue ; 
it only follows that we cannot be sure about it. 
It is not necessary that belief should be 
limited to the verifiable. Luther thought that 
Apollos wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 
others have entertained the same opinion. 
There is no reason why a scholar should not 
entertain this opinion if he sees fit. Still, if he 
is a sane scholar, we expect him to admit that 
his belief is among the things that cannot be 
verified, that Origen is on safe ground when 
he affirms that God alone knows who wrote 
the Epistle in question. This line of reasoning 
holds over the entire field of Biblical history. 
The reconstruction of the history of Israel in 
modern scholarship has so much to say for 
itself that we accept it as probably true. It 
is more likely to be true than the traditional 
view ; and where the exact state of the case 
can never be surely known, probabilities count. 
In historical investigation probability is the 
guide to life; and yet the result attained is 
a belief founded indeed upon evidence, but 



72 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

unverifiable in the nature of the case. It is 
unlikely that Isaiah of Jerusalem wrote the 
exilic prophecy contained in chapters forty to 
sixty-six inclusive. It is far more likely that 
another prophet wrote the larger part of these 
prophetic words ; but again certainty is out 
of the question. When it comes to Cheyne's 
method of cutting up Isaiah into a pack of 
cards, and coloring the cards according to the 
periods in which they originated, scholarship 
has forsworn science and taken up the trick 
of the juggler. I admit that the juggler has 
his rights so long as he admits the purely sub- 
jective value of his feats. 

The fact is, among all men, belief extends 
far into the region of the unverifiable. No- 
thing can be said against this extension even 
in its wildest form so long as it is clearly un- 
derstood to be what it is, a guess, a divination 
with the world for or against it. Still less 
should we object when the scholar works in 
this vast region of the strictly unverifiable by 
rigorous scientific method. Let him gather all 
available facts ; let him sift and test his facts 



THE ISSUE DEFINED} 73 

by every known scientific device ; let him rea- 
son from them in logical order, and let him 
state his conclusion with all the strength al- 
lowed by the probabilities of the case, and we 
shall thank him. He has not given us certainty 
because in the nature of the case that is im- 
possible. He has given us a likely, a probable, 
and a fruitful result, and we are thankful for 
so much. 

While it does not follow that the unverifi- 
able is untrue, or that belief should be limited 
to the verifiable, it is clear that the unverifi- 
able can never remain an essential part of a 
reasonable faith. Therefore it is unreasonable 
when men impose upon one another in one 
undistinguishable mass both that which is 
open to verification and that which is not. 
Such a crude compound is the traditional or- 
thodoxy of the world. What a man holds by 
the dead strength of mere belief is as far as 
the east is from the west from that which he 
holds as verified in the life of his spirit. We 
conclude, therefore, that all in the life of Je- 
sus and his apostles that is open to verification 



74 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

to-day stands in an entirely different category 
from all in his career and in that of his apostles 
which cannot be tested here and now in the 
courses of experience. I contend that a rea- 
sonable faith will note this distinction and 
build upon it. I contend that a reasonable 
faith will put small stress upon the unverifi- 
able, and that it will stake its life upon the 
verifiable and sure. 

History has two sides, one factual, the other 
ideal. In regard to these two sides of history 
we ask two distinct and different questions. In 
regard to facts we ask, Did they occur? In 
regard to ideas we ask, Are they true? The 
alleged facts of history are of two kinds 
— natural and miraculous. Even where the 
alleged facts are natural, scholars are often 
unable to arrive at an affirmative conclusion 
respecting them. Whether the migration of 
Abraham is fact or legend, whether Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob are historical or mythical 
persons, are questions that many scholars find 
themselves unable to answer. The number of 
these alleged facts concerning which no de- 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 75 

cisive probability may be had that they are 
real, is very great. History is but a poor rem- 
nant of a vanished world-life. This remnant 
divides itself into the more or less likely or 
unlikely. Part even of this remnant must be 
ruled out as probably unauthentic. Part is re- 
tained whose authenticity is more or less open 
to question. Still another part is accepted on 
the ground of a strong probability in its favor; 
the most authentic of mere historical facts 
rests on nothing surer than high probability. 
As examples, take the conquest of Palestine 
under Joshua, the Peloponnesian war, the mili- 
tary career of Hannibal, the strictly external 
history of Jesus, the missionary journeys of 
Paul. The alleged facts here are of four or- 
ders : first incredible, second credible but 
questionable, third probable, fourth of high 
probability. 

If this is the state of the case, why are we 
so sure that Napoleon, Washington, Crom- 
well, William of Orange, Frederick the Great, 
Charlemagne, Caesar, and Pericles lived? Be- 
cause the facts were conjoined with ideas, 



76 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

modified life, continued to do so for long pe- 
riods of time, and because without these per- 
sons no rational account can be given of the 
civilization of their respective peoples. When 
it comes to Socrates and to Paul, probability 
becomes moral certainty. No sane mind ques- 
tions the traditional view. Without the his- 
toric Socrates, Greek philosophy is an enigma ; 
without the historic Paul, imperial Christian- 
ity is inexplicable. Facts conjoined with ideas 
acquired such momentum in the life of the 
world that their rejection becomes a mark of 
insanity. So we judge the historic Jesus. On 
the basis of mere historical fact he is open to 
the question by which every alleged fact is 
confronted. In him fact and idea unite and 
change the course of the world's life, and to 
doubt his historical reality is to-day simply in- 
dication of a pathological state of mind. Still 
it must be repeated that mere fact, even when 
it is natural fact, can attest itself by nothing 
stronger than probability. 

When the alleged facts are miraculous, the 
question, Did they occur? is a much harder 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 77 

one. Other questions come in, such as For 
what end did they take place ? By whom are 
they attested ? Is the attestation that of an 
eye witness or tradition? How far were the 
witnesses and reporters influenced by the gen- 
eral belief in the miraculous? How does this ex- 
ceptional and limited human experience stand 
against the solemn general experience of man- 
kind ? Such questions set before one the im- 
possibility of attaining anything like certainty 
in regard to miracle at its best, — miracle in 
the evangelical record. It must therefore be 
placed in the category of the unverifiable. It 
is not on that account necessarily untrue, but 
its truth is not open to attestation. 

When we come to ideas, to the great ideas 
of the Christian faith, the case is different. 
We ask, Are they true ? But we do not go 
two thousand years into history in order to 
begin the answer to that question. These ideas 
are both historic and contemporaneous. They 
are historic, and yet they are independent of 
history. They offer themselves to-day, as if it 
were the first flush in the dawning morning 



78 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

of time, to the lives o£ men to be tested there. 
Our God is still a present help in time of 
need ; our Lord is the living Lord moving in 
the hearts of living men. The kingdom of 
love is verified only in part, but it looms be- 
fore men, inspiring them in the great process 
of verification. Eternal life is human exist- 
ence raised to excellence, and because of that 
excellence full of the hope of immortality. 

Even in the sphere of ideas, we must recall 
Kant's distinction, while we decline to be 
bound by his use of it. Certain ideas are in- 
capable of verification because they are in a 
region beyond all possible human experience. 
How did God spend the eternity before the 
creation of the cosmos and the advent of man? 
What is the secret history of the Eternal mind? 
How do the spirits of just men made perfect 
live? How does the purely spiritual world 
subsist? What becomes of this world of sense 
for the disembodied spirit? These questions 
are, for human beings, unanswerable. They 
are unanswerable because they are in a region 
in which, while we remain men, we can have 



THE ISSUE DEFINED 79 

no experience whatever* They relate to things 
beyond all possible human experience, and one 
judgment about them is as good as another, 
because all judgments are worthless. We 
may dream our dream upon such things, and 
so long as we do not mistake our dream for a 
verified idea, it will do us no harm and may do 
us good. 

Much in the theological tradition of the 
Christian faith is unverifiable because as idea 
it lies outside the sphere of all possible human 
experience. That in Christian faith which is 
sure and mighty is the verifiable. We may test 
our Christian ideas of God, the grace of God, 
the efficacy of prayer, the possible sover- 
eignty of the spirit in man over the flesh, 
the brotherhood of man, the kingdom of love, 
the worth of Jesus Christ for the moral ideal- 
ist of to-day. Out of this vast experimental 
process Christianity is in each generation born 
anew ; and it is this contemporaneous, attested, 
sure Christianity to which belongs the empire 
of the world. 

It is the profound sense that essential Chris- 



80 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

tianity is self-attesting in the contemporary 
world of man that brings calm and serenity. 
Christianity is reality, eternal reality in the 
souls that know it and that live by its grace 
and strength. Nothing can take away the 
truth that is held in life. When Christ is within 
men the hope of glory ; when the ideas of his 
gospel are the creative forces in human exist- 
ence ; when the Eternal Spirit is the object 
of an immediate experience, faith is in the 
keeping not of learning but of life. The 
Christian religion depends upon the un- 
changeableness of God as the Father and lover 
of man; upon the permanent representative 
worth of Jesus Christ Godward and manward ; 
and upon the creative might of the Divine 
love revealed in him, in the human heart and 
in society; and ultimately it depends upon 
nothing else. While Infinite love lasts God 
lives ; while his sovereign love endures Christ 
is King ; while love remains a glorious possi- 
bility and a transcendent experience our Chris- 
tianity in its essence is beyond the reach of 
accident. 



CHAPTER II 

BELIEF IJI GOD AND MIRACLE 



MORE and more the view prevails among 
educated people that miracles are no 
part of genuine history. The opinion prevails 
that at this point the Christian religion does 
not differ from other religions. The miracu- 
lous element, so it is more and more widely 
held, is the constant and spurious accompani- 
ment, in ancient times, of every great religious 
movement. To-day, this element does not count ; 
it is widely rejected; it is still more widely 
disregarded. Face to face with the movement 
which threatens to sweep the miraculous from 
the reasonable beliefs of mankind, it is perti- 
nent to ask, How much will thus be lost to 
faith ? How much will survive the storm and 
abide? 

If the mechanism of cause and effect is 



82 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

made to cover the entire field of human expe- 
rience, if all human things and thoughts are 
under the reign of fixed law, is there room for 
spirit in the cosmos or in man ? The sovereign 
interest of human life centres in the existence 
and character of God. If there is no God, there 
can be, in the full meaning of the word, no re- 
ligion. If God exists, but exists without regard 
to man, again religion, in the full and happy 
sense of the term, is an impossibility. The be- 
ing and character of God are thus the sovereign 
object and interest of faith; and the being 
and character of God are bound up with the 
ways in which he reveals that being and char- 
acter. Therefore we may say that God, and 
God in the Christian vision of his attitude 
toward man, are the citadel of our faith. What- 
ever threatens these, threatens our religion ; 
whatever leaves these entire and untroubled, 
means little or nothing to enlightened men in 
its otherwise destructive course. Our discus- 
sion revolves about these three fundamental 
questions : In what way is belief in God af- 
fected by the denial of miracle? How does it 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 83 

fare with Jesus Christ if the miraculous in the 
evangelical record is regarded as unreal ? Is 
the Christian life harassed or injured seriously 
by disregard for miracle? These questions 
will be discussed in the order stated, and I 
begin with the consideration of the relation of 
belief in God to miracle. 

ii 

God is the life and light and consolation of 
the world, and it is clear that his existence is 
independent of miracle. He is the indispens- 
able antecedent of all miracle and of all mech- 
anism. The miraculous means the contradic- 
tion of the customary order of the world, as 
when the axe is said to come from the bed 
of the Jordan to its surface at the call of the 
prophet. Mechanism means the customary 
order of the world regarded as invariable and 
inviolable, as in the statement, " Whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap" ; wheat 
comes from wheat, barley from barley, tares 
from tares. The miraculous is the extraordi- 
nary and the mechanical the ordinary way of 



84 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

bringing things to pass. Both refer the mind 
to an indispensable antecedent. The ante- 
cedent of all life, of all change, of the entire 
world in space and time is the Eternal God. 
No matter what the mode of their production 
may be, all events, all results, all finite beings 
refer themselves to the one sovereign source : 
"For every house is build ed by some one; 
but he that built all things is God." 

If, therefore, there is any truth in miracle, it 
is as the witness of God ; if there is any mean- 
ing in mechanism, it is as the revelation of 
his will. The Nile divides into two rivers at 
the Delta, but whichever stream one takes, it 
brings him to the same sea. If we choose to 
regard the operation of the cosmos as dividing 
into two methods, one the miraculous and the 
other the mechanical, it must be added that 
both conduct to the same goal ; the terminus 
of all things is God. 

If there is no such thing as miracle, it does 
not follow that there is no such being as God. 
God is not thus dependent upon miracle for 
the declaration of his will. The extremest 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 85 

champion of the miraculous would not claim 
that if miracle is untrue, God is unreal. The 
fading of miracle, therefore, from the field 
of faith does not mean the vanishing of God 
from the life of the world. 

One might with some reason advance this 
position of indifference. One might contend 
that the cosmos, operated as an order invari- 
able and inviolable, is the better witness for 
God. Reasonable men do not work by hap- 
hazard, they work by plan ; the expression of 
mind in any sphere of human life is the ex- 
pression of a plan ; the highest work of art 
means the completest expression of the best 
design. If the physical organism of man is an 
expression of indwelling mind, the expression 
is completer and more impressive in proportion 
to the invariable order disclosed. If the cos- 
mos is the embodiment and expression of cos- 
mic mind, the invariable order of the cosmos 
would seem to be the higher evidence of the 
reasonableness of the impelling mind. We 
should be put to utter confusion if we could 
not count upon the ebb and flow of the tide, 



86 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

the succession of day and night, the invariable 
sequences of the seasons, the inviolable opera- 
tion of cause and effect. In such a universe we 
should never know what to expect. We should 
be unable to adjust ourselves to the crazy- 
world. There could be no science in such a 
world ; for the foundation of science is order. 
There could be no prevision in life; for pre- 
vision depends upon the uniform movement 
in nature. Such a cosmos would be like an in- 
sane asylum ; instead of one sovereign, steady, 
trustworthy mind, we should have, at best or 
at worst as one chooses to name it, a collec- 
tion of conflicting minds, bound together by 
the tie of madness. A miraculous universe, in 
the sense of a universe uncontrolled by law, 
would be, for a reasonable man aiming at true 
vision and right behavior, the supreme calam- 
ity. He would be at a loss to know what to 
think or what to do ; indeed, in such a uni- 
verse there could be neither truth nor right. 
Eternal surprise would then seem to be the 
essence of existence, and eternal suspense the 
sorrow of man. Pandora's box open, with hope 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 87 

gone, and infinite plagues afflicting men, 
would be the only proper symbol for such a 
chaos of things and beings. 

We must not forget that the ancient word 
cosmos, and the modern word universe, have 
come to us through the observed order of ex- 
istence. Facts have been unified in laws ; laws 
of inferior range have been taken up into 
those of higher range ; all things and all be- 
ings have been regarded as forming one whole 
because of the omnipresence of order; and 
the universe has found its being and home in 
the will of God. Existences as ordered, as an- 
swerable to law, as forming one sublime whole, 
as gathered into the boundless universe which 
rests in the sovereign intelligent Will, become 
the living, harmonious witnesses for him whose 
mind constitutes them, and whose will supplies 
them power. The story of the rainbow that 
appeared to Noah after the flood is the Bib- 
lical illustration of the relief that man finds 
in escape from an uncertain world into one 
sane and sure. The world of the flood is the 
world of miracle ; and even to the surviving 



88 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Patriarch and his family it was not a wholly 
satisfactory place. The bow in the heavens 
was God's covenant with Noah, that hereafter 
order should prevail, that nature should no 
more run wild, that seed-time and harvest, 
summer and winter, should no more fail. As 
often as man beheld that form of resplendent 
loveliness spanning the heavens, — the triumph 
of light in darkness and in tempest, — he was 
to think of God's covenant with man in the 
order of the world. That order, so universal, 
so inviolable, so truly the condition of all 
science and all reasonable conduct, so sure as 
the platform of life, and so sublime as the 
field of intellectual vision, deserves to be called 
God's covenant with man. If we call it mech- 
anism, we need not deny that it is pervaded 
with mind; if we say that existence is a wheel, 
we may assert that in the wheel is spirit. 
Every wheel is dead until the power of move- 
ment is given it from some living thing. The 
wheels receive their power from the horse, the 
horse is subject to the reins, the reins are in 
the hands of a man, and therefore in the 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 89 

wheels of his machine the spirit of the man 
lives. That is the issue of a true conception of 
mechanism. The universe of things is a vast 
wheel. To whatever powers in the way of in- 
termediate causes it is fastened, the final source 
of movement is the Supreme Mind. If we fig- 
ure the universe in its mechanical character 
as an infinite sun-chariot, if we look to the 
glorious steeds for power to turn the flaming 
wheels, we must not pause there : we must 
carry our vision onward through bit and rein 
to the god who drives. A mechanical universe 
thus turns out to be a divine universe ; a me- 
chanical universe becomes an auroral universe, 
with the Eternal Spirit in the wheels. 

in 

Let us look into the Bible and note what 
may be learned there touching the relation of 
belief in God and miracle. Limiting our view 
in the first place to the Old Testament, we 
shall, I think, be surprised to find how largely 
independent of miracle is the consciousness 
of God enshrined there. In the great poem of 



90 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

creation with which Genesis opens, there is 
no miracle till we come to the making of man ; 
all is order, consecutive order, from the prim- 
itive darkness brooded by the Eternal Spirit 
to the fully developed cosmos. Man is the 
expression of a creative act, but his life is 
normal after he arrives, and fits into a normal 
world. The exquisite biographies in the Book 
of Genesis were doubtless reduced to their 
present form at a late period. The migration 
of Abraham, the spiritual experiences of Jacob, 
and the Divine favor that rested upon Joseph 
are conceived, one might almost say, in the 
modern spirit. In the Exodus we come upon 
a field of miracles ; yet even here it is diffi- 
cult to say how much is meant to be taken as 
history and how much as poetry. The Exodus 
reads like an epic poem, the epic of the deliv- 
erance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, and 
their fortunes on the way to the land of prom- 
ise. The vision of God attributed to Moses is 
indeed here and there accompanied by signs 
and wonders ; but, again, one is never sure 
that these are not the poetry into which inef- 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 91 

fable experience gathered itself. It is clear 
that the vision is separable from the miracle ; 
for to him for whom all these stories of manna 
and quails, dividing of the Red Sea, pillars 
of cloud by day and pillars of fire by night, 
are myths, legends, or symbols, the vision of 
God abides. An ineffable experience shines 
through all these stories, and survives in its 
own strength when they are no longer credible. 
When we come to the wisdom-literature of 
Israel, we hear nothing of miracle. In Job 
there is no miracle, if we except the epilogue ; 
here there is nothing but the sublime reflection 
of universal human experience in God's world. 
In Proverbs and in Ecclesiastes there is no 
miracle ; here again there is nothing but the 
wisdom which man wins by work and sorrow. 
We take the Book of Ruth as a work of ima- 
gination founded upon fact ; we find it written 
with deep and touching fidelity to the order 
of life and death as we know that order. In 
the story of Esther the same general remark 
may be made: we see in the ancient forms and 
incidents of the story our own ordered world. 



92 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

For the conception of one sovereign eternal 
mind as the ground and ruler of the universe, 
we are indebted to the Hebrew prophets. The 
universe as a moral organism inhabited by the 
moral Deity is the great bequest of Hebrew 
seers. This idea is brought out by Amos, 
Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the great pro- 
phet of the Exile. It is hardly true to their 
burning consciousness of God to call it an idea. 
For these men God is eternal reality. In their 
thoughts and feelings and lives he is the su- 
preme presence and certainty. In the ancient 
world there is nothing so impressive as the 
triumphant consciousness of God which these 
men bring into the life of their time. What 
are miracles compared with this, — the tes- 
timony of external wonders to this inward 
divine wonder? As well might one put the 
staging on an equality with the cathedral. 
Take the staging down and put it away ; the 
great building stands in its own right. Even 
if true, miracles are external and mean, when 
set in the presence of the blazing conscious- 
ness of God in which these great souls live 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 93 

and work. The origin of the whole higher 
character and service of Isaiah is in his vision : 
"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw 
the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted 
up, and his train filled the temple. Above him 
stood the ' seraphim : each one had six wings ; 
with twain he covered his face, and with twain 
he covered his feet, and with twain he did 
fly. And one cried unto another, and said, 
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts : the 
whole earth is full of his glory." * What is 
this but the transcendent form of that which 
comes to every soul that would find and ful- 
fill the end of existence ? What is this but the 
splendid poetic utterance of a man who has 
seen God in the order of the world and above 
and beyond it? What is this but a spiritual 
revelation going forth in its native might, 
working and resting in its own high inde- 
pendence ? 

Jeremiah is another impressive witness to 
this immediateness and independence of the 
things of the spirit. There came to him a call 

Isaiah vi, 1-3. 



94 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

from God ; it rang in great tones through his 
being; it overcame his weakness, his hesita- 
tion, his despair. It filled him with awe, 
ennobled him with a sense of responsibility, 
turned him, timid as a child, into an heroic 
witness for the kingdom of God. It left him 
with no room to doubt God, and with no need 
for the support of miracle. Indeed, this prophet 
stands for the revelation that has been con- 
fessed to be the inward and spiritual in a new 
and prof ounder sense. "Behold, the days come, 
saith the Lord, that I will make a new cove- 
nant with the house of Israel, and with the 
house of Judah : not according to the cove- 
nant that I made with their fathers in the day 
that I took them by the hand to bring them out 
of the land of Egypt. . . . But this is the cove- 
nant that I will make with the house of Israel 
after those days, saith the Lord ; I will put my 
law in their inward parts, and in their heart will 
I write it ; and I will be their God, and they 
shall be my people : and they shall teach no 
more every man his neighbor, and every man 
his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 95 

shall all know me, from the least of them unto 
the greatest of them, saith the Lord : for I 
will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will 
I remember no more." * These great words are 
the herald of the gospel of Christ ; they lay 
open to the heart the eternal nature of religion ; 
they show it to be a vital and righteous life 
in the full communion of the soul with God. 
They show it to be wholly independent of mir- 
acle, traveling in the greatness of its strength, 
and mighty for the spirit and the society in 
whom it truly lives. 

If we look at Ezekiel, we find him with vi- 
sions of God, among the captives, by the river 
Chebar. The word of God was spoken to his 
spirit; it became his burden, his message to 
his people. Again the prophet is the man of 
God, the seer with an original and vital vision 
of the Eternal for his own people and time ; 
and his address is to the souls of men in the 
name and grace of the Infinite soul. 

The prophet Amos is another great repre- 
sentative of spiritual religion. Society in his 

1 Jeremiah xxxi, 31-34. 



96 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

time was a wild welter of sin and shame; yet 
in the tides of that terrible social life Amos 
beheld and announced God. He saw that in 
the moral retribution in society, in the courses 
of retributive justice, the eternal conscience 
comes to a tremendous apocalypse. Carlyle 
said that his study of the French Revolution 
convinced him of the presence of God in the 
affairs of men and nations; from that lurid 
drama he learned that no sinner and no society 
of sinners shall go unpunished, that an eter- 
nal nemesis waits upon injustice and inhuman- 
ity, and that up from the wild whirlpools of 
woe and death comes the vindication of the 
moral order of the world. In the same spirit, 
Amos, looking upon the black iniquities of his 
time, discovers the avenging presence of the 
Infinite justice : " Though they dig into hell, 
thence shall mine hand take them ; and though 
they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring 
them down. And though they hide themselves 
in the top of Carmel, I will search and take 
them out thence ; and though they be hid 
from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 97 

will I command the serpent, and he shall bite 
them." 1 

On the other hand, we have in Hosea a rev- 
elation of God through the merciful tides in 
the human heart. Here is a unique book em- 
bodying a unique and a gracious vision. There 
are in society and in history not only courses 
of retributive justice, but also tides of eternal 
compassion and forgiveness. The moral order 
is in the hands of the Infinite Father of men, 
and the stern discipline through which the 
sinful soul and nation are made to pass is all 
in the interest of an ultimate repentance, for- 
giveness, and redemption. Here again the char- 
acter of God is read not out of miracle, but 
out of the heart of the moral world in man. 

In the second Isaiah this vision of God in 
the courses of national woe and redemption is 
wrought out with a richness of insight and 
with a majesty of eloquence to which I think 
there are few parallels in the literature of the 
race. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, 
saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to 

1 Amos ix, 2, 3. 



98 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare 
is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned ; 
that she hath received of the Lord's hand 
double for all her sins." ! This majestic call 
from the heights of God's love to the depths 
of national sin and despair is repeated on into 
the final words of the great message. National 
religion has become a religion of life, a religion 
of the living God ; and his prophet looks for 
him, not in signs and wonders, but in the 
whole body of individual and social experience. 
Every force in life, every phase in human ex- 
perience, now has found a tongue; and from 
the heights of man's soul in vicarious suffering 
and service there goes up the response to the 
suffering and vicarious love of God. The fifty- 
third chapter of Isaiah gives us at his best the 
individual servant of Jehovah and the national 
servant of Jehovah ; it also records at its high- 
est in the literature of the Old Testament the 
vision of the God and Redeemer of men. To 
introduce the idea of miracle here would bring 
not light, but confusion ; it would be to bring 

1 Isaiah xl, 1, 2. 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 99 

the mature spirit from the clear and sure con- 
sciousness of God gained in the fiery courses 
of experience, back to the nursery with its 
toys, symbols, and plays* The clear and earnest 
intellect protests, in the name of religion, 
against that return and reduction. 

What shall we say of the Psalms, the in- 
comparable Psalms? They are incomparable as 
poetry, because they are the unapproachable 
lyric expression of the spiritual life of great 
souls. The life presented in these songs is the 
life in God: — 

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place 
In all generations. 

Before the mountains were brought forth, 
Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, 
Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art 
God. 

That faith is born not of miracle, but of life 
and vision. I might go on to recall these high 
words : — 

The Lord is my light and my salvation. 
God is our refuge and strength. 



100 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

For thy lovingkindness is better than life. 

For thou hast been my help, 

And in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. 

The greater Psalms are woven out of the 
deepest and sweetest experiences, and the 
blazing design in the fabric is the image of 
God. Here miracle is not denied; it is left 
at an infinite depth below this elevation of 
the soul in God. The pain of life, its burden, 
disappointment, defeat, loss, and sorrow, its 
whole dark tragedy, is lifted into the being of 
God and his beauty is made the soul of it all. 
Nothing outside the words of Jesus can match 
the spiritual depth of these Psalms, their fidel- 
ity to the profoundest sorrow and the loftiest 
joy, their accents of sweet assurance of God, 
and their sense of him as life's last refuge and 
hope. When, therefore, we are troubled over 
the modern disregard of miracle, let us recall 
the fact that the greatest things in the Hebrew 
Scriptures are in sublime isolation from mira- 
cle. Listen again to the prophetic call from 
the testimony without to the witness within : 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 101 

" The sun shall be no more thy light by day ; 
neither for brightness shall the moon give light 
unto thee : but the Lord shall be unto thee 
an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." 

IV 

So much I have said in general about the 
relative independence of miracle of the faith 
in God in the Old Testament. I now wish to 
show in detail how the vision of God is held 
both in the Old and New Testaments. As a 
preliminary remark, in accordance with the 
whole higher spirit of the Bible, it may be 
said that there are two affronts to the mind of 
man : first, to affirm that God cannot be known ; 
second, to affirm that he can be known directly. 
The first affirmation confines vision to the 
temporal ; the second gives the vision of the 
Eternal apart from the temporal. Both posi- 
tions are not in accord with the fact. We are 
not confined to the temporal, and we cannot 
see God beyond the temporal. We know God 
in and through the temporal, and in and 
through the character which the temporal is 



102 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

made to bear. There is a vision of God, but 
the vision is indirect. 

The Biblical consciousness of God may be 
reduced to four forms. There is the conscious- 
ness of God expressed in the words : " I have 
seen God face to face, and my life is pre- 
served." Taking this statement as it stands, 
what does it mean ? It conceives God in bod- 
ily form, it looks upon the face of God as we 
look upon the face of man, it takes the face 
of God as the symbol of the divine soul as 
we take the face of man as the symbol of the 
human soul ; and it reads the supreme mind in 
the supreme face as we read character in the 
countenance of a friend. The vision of God is 
indirect ; it is intense'; it is confident ; it is vic- 
torious; but it is through an intervening face. 

Paul says in his great lyric on love : " For 
now we see in a mirror, darkly." The mirror 
of which he writes is the bronze mirror of 
his time. It might be dull, or it might be bur- 
nished ; it might be in a poor or in an excellent 
condition ; it might be susceptible of indefi- 
nite improvement as a mirror. Still, it could 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 103 

be nothing more than a mirror; it could give 
only the image, the reflection of the object. 
Here is Paul's consciousness of God laid open 
to us. Whether it referred itself to Christ or 
to the wondrous changes wrought in his own 
character, it was a consciousness of God as 
reflected in his Lord or in his own soul. The 
vision was again indirect ; it was given in an 
order of life, the Lord's, his own, the world's. 

In the Fourth Gospel we are told that no 
man hath seen God at any time; the only 
begotten Son who is in the bosom of the 
Father, he hath declared him. Here the vision 
of Jesus becomes the vision of God. Here is 
a thinker, a sympathizer, a sufferer, a doer, a 
victor, in whom as in a living mirror we may 
behold the character of God as Eternal thinker, 
lover, doer, and victor. The vision of Jesus is 
the vision of God through the Divine man. 

Once more we learn, and this time from the 
lips of Jesus, that the pure in heart shall see 
God. Tested by experience, this must mean 
that God becomes visible to the pure mind in 
the intention of man's life, in its fidelity, its 



104 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

happiness and hope. Just as in the spirit level 
of the mason when it finds a level wall the eye 
looks hack into his, so the plan of the soul, 
the plan of human life, becomes strikingly 
visible when the mind is a pure, a disinterested 
mind ; and in the plan of our humanity there 
is the presentation of God. When this plan is 
operated in a righteous life, in a fellowship of 
righteous lives, in the new creation of right- 
eous lives of which Paul speaks, the presen- 
tation of God is great and impressive. There 
is the vision of God, but again it is through 
an order of the human spirit, an order made 
active and potent in life. 

This Biblical idea of the vision of God in the 
order and life of man is variously and richly 
set forth. In one Psalm we read, " In Judah 
is God known " ; in another, " God is known 
in her palaces " ; ! in the first, God is reflected 
in the life of his people ; in the second, he is 
seen in their prosperity and splendor. Again, 
we read that this poor man cried unto the Lord, 
and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of 

1 Psalm lxxvi, 1 ; xlviii, 3. 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 105 

all his troubles. Here the exigencies of exist- 
ence covered with prayer lead to the vision 
of God in the terrible trial. We are elsewhere 
admonished to grow in grace and in the 
knowledge of God; here God is known as 
the Maker of the spiritual life. " Return to 
thy rest, my soul/' is another cry from the 
depths. God is known as man's refuge and 
rest in a wild world. In the days preceding 
Pentecost we are told that the disciples were 
of one accord, and that they continued to- 
gether in prayer. Thus the new society of 
Christian men and women became a new wit- 
ness for the God of love. The words of Jesus, 
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father/' 
are the supreme instance of this approach to 
God ; that approach is first through the Divine 
man, and then through the divine in all men. 
There is one great book in the New Testa- 
ment which I find seldom meets the apprecia- 
tion that it merits, I mean the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. It was written to Hebrews who had 
become Christians after Jerusalem had been 
destroyed, the temple desecrated and reduced 



106 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

to a heap of stones ; when Israel had no longer 
a place or name among the nations of the earth ; 
when the facts of life were in bitter and mock- 
ing contradiction of the glorious hopes of 
prophet and seer ; when Christians were poor, 
scattered, without power, suffering and dying 
in an empire sinking under the weight of its 
own corruption ; when the promised return of 
the Lord Christ had been so long delayed as to 
fail any longer to inspire courage and hope. 
In this forlorn condition into which the Chris- 
tian community had come, in this consciousness 
to which it had been slowly and inevitably 
brought by the iron mechanism of the tempo- 
ral order in which it stood, a nameless writer 
of the highest insight and character set him- 
self the task of translating the religion of his 
race from the letter into the spirit, from de- 
pendence upon events in time to trust in the 
coming and power of the Eternal Spirit. The 
whole Old Testament dispensation became a 
symbol through which he discovered the char- 
acter of the final spiritual religion. Time itself 
became a symbol, a form of sense, a poetic em- 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 107 

blem for the revelation of the invisible God and 
his kingdom of love. Would that religious men 
and teachers of religion would read this mon- 
umental book and gain from it the sure vision 
of that kingdom which cannot be shaken ! 
Here was a man who went through the disci- 
pline that now is upon us, and who came forth 
with the eternal gospel delivered from the 
beggarly elements of the world, holding its 
place in human society by its divine right, 
doing the greatest things that can be done 
for men, — giving them the certain vision of 
the Eternal God, strength to serve him, and 
power to trust the world to his infinite good 
will in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

In this brief study of the consciousness of 
God among the people of Israel, we find it 
resting, not upon portent or wonder, but upon 
the divine order of man's life. This mighty 
consciousness of God both in the Old Testa- 
ment and in the New is absolutely independent 
of miracle. It is not even in the region where 
miracles are supposed to take place; it is in 
the sphere of the spirit. In that sphere Prophet, 



108 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

seer, Psalmist, man of God, met the Eternal 
spirit. Through the constitution of the soul, 
individual and social, and through its operation 
in the vision and service of the moral ideal, 
these men of sovereign religious genius beheld 
God. They attained thus to the vision of God; 
they were able to breathe something of the 
Ineffable into their words, and those words, 
because they enshrine the supreme conscious- 
ness of God, become the Bible for mankind 



If now we consider the grounds upon which 
reasonable men in all ages have believed in 
God, we shall see that miracle in the sense 
of the suspension or violation of natural law 
does not count. These grounds have been 
some striking personal experience of a spirit- 
ual nature, supported by a general process of 
reasoning. Socrates lived and acted under a 
sense of a special intimation of the Divine will. 
In the restraining influence of his demon, the 
belief in God of the pious Greeks of his time 
was made personal and commanding. The 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 109 

tradition of faith thus became real to Socrates, 
as the tradition of Christian belief becomes 
real to many in our time through what is 
called conversion. In behalf of this intense 
subjective interest, Socrates presents his argu- 
ment for the existence and goodness of God 
against the little atheist Aristodemus ! 1 It is 
founded upon the evidence of design in man's 
body and intellect. It is, as Macaulay remarks, 
as exact a statement of the argument from 
design as that presented by Paley. It is no 
less impressive than Paley's, although far less 
elaborate. What concerns us here is neither 
the validity nor the invalidity of this theistic 
inference, but the fact that it is an example 
of a great theological tradition wherein belief 
in God is justified, not by an appeal to miracle, 
but by the evidence of rational order. 

The historic arguments in which belief in 
God has found vindication are the ideal, the 
cosmological, the arguments from design and 
from the moral nature of man. From the idea 
of the absolutely perfect being, Anselm, Des- 

1 Xenophon, Memorabilia, B. 1, 4. 



110 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

cartes, and others inferred the existence of the 
supremely perfect mind. From the universe 
as an event, a phenomenon, other thinkers 
have inferred a cause, a noumenal ground 
adequate to the production and to the contin- 
uance in being of all created worlds. From 
the marks of design in the cosmos, in the 
world of animals, in the body and mind of 
man, it has been inferred that the Creator and 
Preserver of all is a being of boundless intelli- 
gence ; and from the moral structure of the 
human soul and from the spiritual experience 
of men, it has been argued that God is good. 
I must repeat that we are not now concerned 
with either the soundness or the unsoundness 
of these famous forms of argument, but with 
the fact that they are one and all exclusive of 
miracle. 

Two forms of the theistic argument merit 
special attention. Upon this question Berkeley 
and Kant stand at the farthest extreme each 
from the other. For Berkeley the whole sen- 
sible world is the language in which the Eter- 
nal Spirit instructs and educates the human 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE HI 

spirit ; for this great thinker the sensible world 
finds its meaning and support in the mind of 
God. Whether one agrees with Berkeley or 
not, there is something impressive and search- 
ing in the consciousness that in the continu- 
ous flow of ordered sensation, in the visual, 
auditory, and tactual images that perpetually 
crowd the mind, men are the partakers of a 
sacrament that sets forth in all the richness of 
color, in all the power of music, and in all the 
reality of touch, the veritable presence and 
life of God. Again, the argument not only 
does not rest in miracle, it excludes it ; for 
the inviolable order immanent in the flow of 
sensations is the essential thing in this mighty 
sacrament. 

Kant had no confidence in arguments for 
the Divine existence drawn from the cosmos. 
As an event it is finite, as an ordered event it 
is finite, and what we seek is the Infinite God. 
Kant's critique of the historic forms of the 
theistic argument is not sympathetic. He does 
not bear in mind the fact that all man's 
thoughts are imperfect, both in substance and 



112 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

in form ; nor does he allow to the arguments 
which he discredits the right to live in their 
imperfection. That mercy I to others show, 
that mercy show to me, is a good rule in philo- 
sophy. If we refuse to consider the imperfect 
thought of an opponent from the inside and 
in a sympathetic spirit, we have no right to 
expect that men in general will deal from the 
inside and in generous sympathy with our im- 
perfect thoughts. Kant's critique of the his- 
toric forms of the theistic argument has been 
applied ruthlessly to his own. Let us not fol- 
low his critics here ; let us regard with open 
mind his great imperfect thought. For Kant, 
God is essential to complete the moral mean- 
ing of human existence. The central thing in 
man's life is duty ; the duty calls for the con- 
ditions essential to its fulfillment ; these are 
freedom, that the dutiful act may have worth ; 
immortality, that the perfectly dutiful life 
may be attained; God, that the moral world 
of man may be intelligible and sure. Here is 
depth and grandeur of insight, final trust in 
the moral order of the world, wonder in the 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 113 

presence of the highest phase of ultimate real- 
ity, but no miracle, and no room for it. 

In this apostolic succession of thinkers about 
God, Spinoza represents another tradition. It 
is easy to see that his profoundly religious 
soul is carried away by the idea of the Infinite. 
An inward experience of comfort and peace 
in God awakens the acute and daring intellect; 
and that intellect builds an impressive and 
enduring structure of thought to prove that 
man is a self-conscious mode of the Eternal 
substance. The point to be noted is the ab- 
sence of miracle, the overwhelming realization 
and the close and vivid articulation of God in 
the thought and argument of the philosopher. 

Spinoza's theistic successor is Schleierma- 
cher, who finds God in feeling, especially in 
the feelings of dependence and moral obliga- 
tion. Here a new chapter is begun in men's 
belief in God. Whether we agree with Schlei- 
ermacher or not, we must note the depth of 
his consciousness of God and the further fact 
that it has nothing to do with miracle; indeed, 
the thing for which religious men of to-day 



114 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

are most indebted to this German thinker is 
that he recognizes so profoundly that religion 
concerns the spirit of man in immediate rela- 
tion to the Infinite Spirit. According to Schlei- 
ermacher, religion is an indestructible human 
interest ; it is the highest and mightiest of all 
our interests; and it rests on nothing for- 
eign to itself, it rests on the abiding nature 
of man's soul in immediate and indissoluble 
relation to God. 

If now we turn to the custom of Christian 
men, we shall be confirmed in our conclusion 
that miracle is of small concern to the true 
believer in God. We receive our belief in God 
from the pious community in which we live. 
We are first of all believers in God on the 
strength of tradition, and mere traditionalists 
we remain till some crisis in the soul overtakes 
us. Some morning when we face the ideal, 
when we stand under the frown of the ideal 
that we have disregarded or denied, when we 
would give the whole world to be on terms of 
self-respect in the presence of that ideal, when 
through one sorrow and another we rise into 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 115 

peace and resolve henceforth to live as the 
servant of the ideal, our faith in God becomes 
bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Out 
of such a mood Fichte wrote his "Vocation 
of Man"; out of such an experience Carlyle 
wrote the three most powerful chapters in 
the prose of the nineteenth century, — " The 
Everlasting Nay/' "The Point of Indiffer- 
ence," " The Everlasting Yea." 

It may be said that God is found in three 
great spheres of our human existence. In the 
sphere of thought, there is the vision of the 
Supreme Being, in whom all life and all reality 
terminate; in the sphere of thought, God be- 
comes vision. In the sphere of action, moral 
action, God is known as the ultimate source 
of impulse, inspiration, victorious will ; in the 
sphere of moral action, God is known as power. 
In the sphere of character, the character which 
is the issue of thought and action combined, 
God is known as indwelling spirit; he is 
known in this sphere as possessor and pos- 
sessed, as possessor of our soul through habit, 
as possessed by the soul through habit, tend- 



116 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ency, the steady current of desire and hope. 
In this great sense it may be said : — 

The Lord is thy keeper : 
The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. 
The sun shall not smite thee by day, 
Nor the moon by night. 
The Lord will keep thee from all evil ; 
He will keep thy soul. 

The Lord will keep thy going out and thy com- 
ing in, 
From this time forth and for evermore. 1 

In all this there is no word of miracle; 
there is nothing but the glory of living in 
God now, thinking his world in him, serving 
his kingdom in him, and in the fixed and yet 
growing habit of the soul possessing him and 
possessed by him. Read again Augustine's 
account of the last days of his beautiful 
mother, and in that connection read once 
more Matthew Arnold's sonnet on " Monica's 
Last Prayer," as a witness to the ways of the 
spirit in bringing us to the full consciousness 
of God. 

1 Psalm cxxi, 5-8. 



BELIEF IN GOD AND MIRACLE 117 

" Ah, could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be ! " 
" Care not for that, and lay me where I fall. 

Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call ; 

But at God's altar, oh ! remember me.' 

Thus Monica, and died in Italy. 
Yet fervent had her longing been, through all 
Her course, for home at last, and burial 
With her own husband, by the Libyan sea. 

Had been ! but at the end, to her pure soul 
All tie with all beside seem'd vain and cheap, 
And union before God the only care. 

Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole. 
Yet we her memory, as she pray'd, will keep, 
Keep by this : " Life in God, and union there ! " 

This leads me to recall here the commun- 
ion of saints with God. The literature of 
this communion is very great in extent and in 
worth. The Fourth Gospel catches and per- 
petuates notes in the life of Jesus that his 
disciples will forever cherish, his sense so 
perfect and so sure that the Eternal is an open 
secret in time, his consciousness radiant, all- 
triumphant in the light and might of God. 
The Epistles of John mark the persistence of 



118 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

this mode of thought ; the discovery that God 
is love, that God is light in whom there is no 
darkness at all, is a discovery through the 
courses of the life of the soul. The " Confes- 
sions" of Augustine, the "Theologia Ger- 
manica," the " Ecclesiastica Musica," the en- 
tire witness of the Mystics, and the inner light 
of the Quakers bring us into a world of spirit 
to which miracle is foreign, and where infer- 
ence is but a single step. In the presence of 
all these ways by which the consciousness of 
God is kept in the world, and made availing 
over the tides of human interest and passion, 
it becomes clear that, whatever may be the 
fortune awaiting miracle, our faith in God is 
not involved in that fortune; that faith is 
original, independent, and sure. 



CHAPTER III 

JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 



TF miracle is a myth, will not the significance 
-*- of Jesus Christ be greatly reduced? If 
Jesus and his gospel are wholly confined within 
the natural order, like the motion in the wheel, 
like the physical life of ordinary men, will 
not the loss to faith be very great? In the 
evangelical record, is not miracle the constant 
accompaniment of his career from beginning 
to end ? And how can this large element be 
eliminated without reducing the dignity and 
freedom of his recorded career ? 

Perhaps it may prepare the way for the 
happy surprise in which our discussion must 
issue to reflect that we can imagine a career 
as full of miracle as the life of Jesus is believed 
to be, and yet without worth. The miraculous 
does not impart to our Lord his worth. We 



120 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

can imagine one born without a human father, 
able to still storms and to walk on the tem- 
pestuous waves, to feed multitudes on food 
ordinarily sufficient only for a few persons, 
cleansing lepers, opening blind eyes, unstop- 
ping deaf ears, raising the dead, and finally 
himself reappearing after death ; we can im- 
agine a career like this full of portent and 
wonder from beginning to end, and yet abso- 
lutely destitute of those supreme qualities 
that have given to Jesus the moral leadership 
of the world. It is possible to conceive this 
miraculous career as entirely devoid of moral 
worth. If Satan has the power to transform 
himself into an angel of light, we can imagine 
this miraculous person moving through his 
wonder-working career not only destitute of 
high qualities, but also with a malign aim. 
Plato's story of the ring of Gyges is an illus- 
tration of this possibility. The wearer of this 
ring becomes invisible. He moves in an order 
of miracle ; for him natural law does not exist. 
Yet his power to do with nature as he pleases 
may mean boundless opportunity to defraud 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 121 

and outrage human life undetected. And if 
this wizard becomes a beneficent wizard, who 
knows that he is not devising new forms of 
deception and plunder ? It is plainly possible, 
therefore, that we might have the miracles of 
Jesus without Jesus himself ; that we might 
possess the wonderful works without possessing 
the Divine man. 

If this is possible, something follows of 
great consequence. If we might possess the 
miracles of our Lord without possessing the 
Lord himself, does it not follow that we might 
lose the miracles of our Lord and still retain 
him ? If all the miracles were gone, the vision 
of Jesus would remain. There is no mention 
of miracle in the Lord's Prayer, none in the 
great discourse in which that prayer stands, 
none in the wonderful parabolic teaching of 
our Master, none in the wisdom with which 
he filled the world. There are three things of 
immortal value in the teaching of Jesus. There 
is his vision of God as infinite compassionate 
love, the Maker and Father of men. There is 
his vision of man as the child of the Eternal, 



122 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

fitted in this temporal existence to reproduce 
in his human relations the dear and just love 
of God. There is the vision which Jesus has 
of himself as the person in whom these two 
visions are verified. He has his personal vision 
of God ; he lives out in conduct his vision of 
his sonhood to God ; and he becomes thereby 
the living witness for the God who is the uni- 
versal Father and for a sonhood wide as the 
race of man. These three visions are absolutely 
independent of miracle, they are the direct 
insight of his mind into the heart of things. 
His insights have power in them to control 
the thinking and to renew the character of 
all who are willing to move in their light. 

I have summed up the teaching of Jesus 
in these three visions, but any such summary 
is utterly inadequate. The wisdom of Jesus 
comes up through the relations and circum- 
stances of man as the life of nature comes in 
spring and summer. The hard and barren 
surface rests back upon life ; it is broken at a 
thousand points into the path of life; it is 
transformed by the tender beauty and the 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 123 

abounding fruitfulness o£ life; it becomes a 
new world, a new humanity. Never man so 
spake. His words are meat and drink to the 
soul ; they are spirit and life. And when we 
recall the fact that man cannot live by bread 
alone, that he needs the word of God, the 
word of supreme wisdom and cheer, we begin 
to see what the infinite wealth of the wise 
teaching of Jesus means. When he says that 
God makes his sun to shine upon the evil 
and the good and sends his rain upon the 
just and the unjust, his vision enables him to 
discover in this order a hint of the infinite 
magnanimity of the Eternal. Lessons come 
through law ; law operating in apparent indif- 
ference to the worth or worthlessness of men 
is lifted into a symbol of a moral perfection 
in God hitherto unimagined, and the careless 
God becomes the eternal magnanimity. Such 
is the universal result of the teaching of Jesus. 
It is almost traduced in our summaries. It 
meets life at a thousand points, and leaves 
the particular trial shining in a flood of light. 
This wisdom and the divining spirit in which 



124 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

it issues are entirely independent o£ miracle. 
No miracle could increase the depth, the 
pathos, the fidelity to life, or the reach of sug- 
gestion concerning the attitude of God to 
men of the Parable of the Lost Son. The ab- 
sence of miracle could in no way lessen the 
wisdom and benignity of such teaching. The 
natural order cannot forbid the mother and 
child from recognizing each the other, from 
responding each to the other's love. Within 
the fixed bounds of nature this insight, this 
freedom and joy, are possible. The natural 
order cannot prohibit or in any way limit or 
mar the wisdom of Jesus ; the vision of Jesus 
is unconditioned ; his freedom is not in the 
keeping of any force other than his own mind. 
It is equally clear that his character is in- 
dependent. It has the twofold significance 
that we discern in all great character, it is 
a product and it is an achievement. It is a 
product of the Infinite to whom he is in 
a constant self-surrender. In that constant 
self-surrender his will is taking its shape from 
the Eternal will, his mind is receiving form 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 125 

from the Eternal mind, his heart is under 
the culture of the Eternal heart. Jesus moves 
in the transcendent sense of God, and from 
God comes the product of his perfect charac- 
ter. It is an issue from the Infinite soul, to 
whom his soul goes up in honor and self- 
surrender. This process is within the bounds 
of nature, and yet nature has nothing to do 
with it. It is a process in the freedom of the 
spirit. Wherever Jesus might be, he had but 
to think and God would know it ; he had 
but to think and he would know God perfect- 
ing his being. Wherever he might be, he had 
only to lift his spirit and there was the Eter- 
nal, he had only to open his soul and God 
was within him. To speak here of miracle, 
wonder, portent, is a kind of blasphemy. 
Shall we introduce into this supreme sanctu- 
ary of humanity the vulgar appeal to sense, 
the tricks and feats of the wizard? Nature 
at her best, miracle at its highest, is at an 
infinite depth below the elevation on which 
the soul of God and the soul of Jesus stand 
in a communion ineffable. 



126 KELIGION AND MIRACLE 

The character of Jesus viewed as an 
achievement precludes miracle ; it is not only- 
independent of miracle, it is inconsistent with 
miracle. Here the great temptation is illu- 
minating. Under trial, stones must not be 
turned into bread ; nor must the Highest 
throw himself from the pinnacle of the tem- 
ple. Character is not thus won. It is won 
under the heat and burden of the day, in 
service and in suffering within the terms of 
the natural life. Jesus stood in human rela- 
tions with human ideals and under human 
obligations. He stood under these obliga- 
tions in a world of trouble and contradiction. 
To provide for him a miraculous escape from 
this order of trial and contradiction would be 
to deny him the opportunity that God has 
given to every man, and to withhold from 
him the eternal gladness which God has made 
possible for every soul. In Nazareth, by the 
Jordan, in the wilderness of Judea, by the 
Sea of Galilee, in all the towns and cities of 
his country, among his disciples and among 
the multitudes that came to hear him, with 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 127 

those who loved him and with those who tried 
to defeat him, Jesus found the opportunity 
of his existence. Through this natural order, 
with human lives set in it, Jesus won his 
character out of the grace of the Eternal. 
Through this order of trial and service came 
the strength and benignity of his soul. In 
one sense he thought seldom of himself and 
often and much of the needy world. " The 
Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom 
for many." He lived out of the heart of the 
paradox, " he that saves his life shall lose it, 
and he that loses his life shall save it." But 
after all, this was but the method of his life. 
He lost it in loving thought and service to 
find it in yet richer perfection ; he departed 
from himself in devotion to the good of others 
to return to himself in a sublimer self-con- 
sciousness. And we must think of him who 
in so many ways is the great consecration of 
the beauty of our world as the Divine artist. 
He had the artist's vision of the completed 
human character ; and he had the artist's 



128 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

knowledge of the ways and means of artistic 
creation and the patience, the infinite loving 
patience. Thus Jesus won his soul. He walked 
the weary way of the world. He did its poor 
work. He spent his strength in lowly service. 
He met and overcame the evils of life, small 
and great. He bore his trouble with benignity. 
He accepted supreme disappointment not only 
with no trace of bitterness, but also with in- 
finite compassion. He transfigured the mean 
circumstances of existence by the eternal ro- 
mance of the dutiful spirit. Like the flower 
in the swamp, he lifted above the vile flood of 
things the stainless purity and perfect beauty 
of his soul, and up through the mire and dirt 
of the earth he drew from God the perfecting 
grace. 

I have said that the temptation of Jesus 
would lose its whole meaning if miracle were 
introduced into it. The same remark must be 
made of the scene in Gethsemane. What is 
there in the records of the world to compare 
with this ? Here is the supremely faithful and 
loving soul face to face with utter temporal 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 129 

defeat; here is the highest service about to 
receive as reward infamy, torture, and death. 
The whole tragedy of existence is here opened 
to the heart — the reversal of just expectation, 
the contradiction of just hope. Here in infi- 
nite night Jesus suffers alone ; here he speaks 
in the thick darkness his inmost thought to 
God ; here he lays bare the horror in his heart 
over what he has done and what he is about 
to receive; here he offers the prayer whose 
initial cry is that the cup of death may pass 
from him, and whose final words are the 
greatest ever spoken in this world : " Neverthe- 
less not my will, but thine, be done." If this 
experience is not great, nothing known to man 
is great. How far away from the poor show 
of miracle it is. How sublime it is as the 
triumph of a soul in the Eternal soul. How 
precious it is as an attestation of the reality 
of the human spirit and the Divine. How 
great it is with illumination and peace for the 
brave in all the generations as they suffer in 
the night, as they appeal to God in the depths. 
What an infinite order it throws open, where 



130 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

souls caught in the tragic order of the world 
are upon the stairs that slope through dark- 
ness up to God. How vast, terrible, beautiful, 
and near to the Eternal peace it shows our 
human world to stand. Let no miracle pro- 
fane its sanctity, let no thought of miracle 
degrade or diminish its hallowed and infinite 
import. 

A sect of some significance arose in the 
early church claiming that Jesus did not die, 
that he only appeared to die. This sect thought 
it inconsistent with the dignity of our Lord 
that he should die. This folly was fittingly 
met with expulsion from the body of normal 
Christian faith. The death of Jesus was real ; 
it was true that he saved others, but himself 
he could not save. His devotion to his cause 
must be unto the uttermost. And whatever 
may be our philosophy of the event, the 
death of Jesus has been recognized by all 
believers in him as an element of power, in his 
religion, of transcendent value. We recall that 
death in our worship at stated intervals: the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the sacra- 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 131 

ment of his death. As an expression, as an 
attestation of love, the whole church through- 
out the world kneels in its presence. Our chief 
objection to transubstantiation and consub- 
stantiation is not that they are absurdities, 
but that they obscure with the quackery of 
miracle the utmost splendor in the bright do- 
main of love. While we worship in this sanc- 
tuary we cry, Take these things hence; my 
Father's house shall be called a house of 
prayer, but ye have made it a den of jug- 
glers. When Jesus said, "It is finished," 
and added, " Father, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit," he consummated his earthly 
career in a character that is spiritual, and as 
such is the sovereign light and comfort of men. 

II 

Taken as a whole, and as a service to the 
religious life, will not the career of Jesus 
suffer great reduction in value, if the miracu- 
lous is entirely eliminated from it ? In answer 
to this question, let us take the two instances 
of the miraculous that are of tenest before our 



132 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

minds to-day : the birth of Jesus and his bodily 
resurrection. In these two fundamental in- 
stances the whole question may be considered. 
Among reasonable Christians of all types 
of belief it is, I think, generally felt that it is 
immaterial how Jesus began, or how he came 
into the world. They feel that they are con- 
cerned not with the process, but with the re- 
sult. And it may here be added that about the 
origin of the life of Jesus knowledge is un- 
attainable ; the life itself is before the world. 
If that life in its solitary perfection is the 
supreme mystery, let it so stand. One mystery 
is not explained by resolving it into another. 
No denial concerning the manner of the be- 
ginning of the life of our Lord can touch the 
fair and sovereign result ; that is fact ; that is 
open to the judgment of the world. The 
theory that Jesus had no human father can- 
not make him more Divine ; the denial of that 
theory cannot in any way interfere with his 
supremacy. Whichever way he began to be, 
Jesus is what he is. He is independent of the 
question how he came into our world. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 133 

There are many to whom the tradition that 
Jesus had no human father is precious. As 
no one can prove that he had a human father, 
their sentiment on this subject is unassailable. 
There are many, and these among the best 
and soundest of the disciples of Jesus, to 
whom this tradition is unwelcome. They recall 
the fact that neither in the Gospel by Mark 
nor in the Gospel by John is the subject 
mentioned; that in all the New Testament 
writings outside of the stories in Matthew and 
Luke, there is not a word in favor of it. In- 
deed, scholars whose orthodoxy has never been 
disputed have contended that Paul's view is 
opposed to the traditional view. Paul uses 
these words of his Master : " Who was born of 
the seed of David according to the flesh, who 
was declared to be the Son cf God with power, 
according to the spirit of holiness, by the res- 
urrection of the dead." For the view that Jesus 
had no human father, the evidence in the New 
Testament is at best slight. If the belief was 
current in the apostolic church, it was consid- 
ered of little moment. What Paul and Peter 



134 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

and John considered immaterial, we may con- 
sider immaterial; what the Second and the 
Fourth Gospels disregard, we may disregard ; 
what in the entire New Testament is relegated 
to two stories in the beginning of the First 
and Third Gospels, we may relegate to a place 
of similar subordination. 

Supported by Scripture in so slight a way 
as this tradition is, one must look elsewhere 
for explanation of its hold upon Christian 
feeling. A theory of human nature lies back 
of it. This theory is that human nature is de- 
praved, and that its natural issue is necessarily 
depraved. In men and women there is nothing 
good. When they become husband and wife, 
father and mother, that which is born of them 
partakes of their depravity. From human 
parents there cannot come by ordinary gen- 
eration a perfect child. Jesus was a perfect 
child ; therefore he could not have come into 
the world by ordinary generation. 

This argument has been strengthened 
through many generations of Christian history 
by ascetic feeling. Men and women have been 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 135 

ashamed of their humanity, they have looked 
upon their natural impulses as a humiliation, 
they have regarded family life as a concession 
to the animal in their nature ; they have con- 
sidered the unmarried state as higher than 
the married, as indeed the only condition com- 
patible with moral purity. A celibate priest- 
hood has set the example to this way of think- 
ing. An inveterate prejudice has thus arisen 
against the honor of wedded love and natural 
human parenthood. 

Against both these positions it is impossible 
too strongly to protest. Human nature is not 
a depraved thing; it has been outraged; it is 
outraged ; but in spite of outrage it remains 
higher than all else that we know except its 
own ideals. It is our witness for God, our 
chief witness, and the less we see of its in- 
herent honor, the less we see of him. Human 
beings are capable of love, and wherever love 
exists, character is cleansed and elevated. The 
love of a man for a woman and the love of a 
woman for a man, under the sanction of law, 
and in the form of marriage, is the heart of 



136 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

all that is best in the life of the race. It is 
true that human nature does not answer to 
its own ideals. That simply shows another as- 
pect of its greatness. It is dissatisfied with 
itself because God troubles it with his presence. 
It longs for the new heaven and the new earth 
because the impulse of the Perfect is alive in 
its heart. It cannot rest until it rest in God be- 
cause he has made it for himself. The failure to 
do justice to human nature is less strange than 
the failure to see the dignity of natural human 
parenthood. While it is true that some of the 
best men and women who have ever lived 
have voluntarily remained outside wedded life, 
while it is true that many may be justified in 
this attitude to-day, it must still be said that 
the ideal state for every man and every woman 
is marriage as the sacrament of love. The 
single life may be accepted as a sacrifice ; it 
is always less than the best. The best thing 
in the happiest human existence is family love, 
and the best thing in family love is parenthood. 
The man and the woman who have not had 
their first-born laid under the protection of their 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 137 

tenderness and truth cannot know how near 
to the human heart the Lord and Giver of life 
may come. The sanctuaries of the world are 
not its churches, mosques, and temples ; they 
are the places where children are born of 
men and women in honorable wedlock. There 
in the awe and mystery of the natural life 
God shows his face as he does nowhere else 
in all the universe. The utmost sanctity of 
our world lies in its worthy paternity and 
maternity. And only God knows how the 
worth of this wicked world is renewed through 
the process of natural human parenthood. So 
long as men love women worthily and women 
love men worthily, so long as these lovers be- 
come husbands and wives under the sanction 
of law, the process of natural parenthood will 
keep in our world chivalry, honor, tenderness, 
fidelity, faith, and the certain sense of the 
dear Eternal God. Take out of our race mar- 
riage and productive human love, and all the 
great things in human character will disappear. 
It is immensely interesting to find the Greek 
Aristotle and the American Edwards at one 



138 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

here. The Greek philosopher saw that the 
animal impulse in man and woman takes on a 
moral character when touched by love ; and 
the American theologian saw the same law of 
life, 1 an insight indeed common to all good 
men. Love lives in natural impulses and pro- 
cesses, and changes their character. Thus it is 
that children in worthy human homes are born 
of the Spirit. By the strength of the Holy 
Ghost they began to be ; by his strength they 
were brought into the world. In this sense it 
is forever true that Jesus was conceived of the 
Holy Ghost while born of his mother and her 
honorable husband. 

The miracle at the beginning of the life 
of Jesus does not, therefore, fall in with the 
thoughts and experiences of reasonable Chris- 
tian people to-day. The nearer to Christ that 
men and women in their homes come, the less 
acceptable becomes that miracle, the less com- 
patible with their own life and hope. Besides, 
it strikes them as an awkward miracle. The 

1 Ethics, Book IX, 12, 25 ; The Nature of Virtue, chapter 
vii. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 139 

influence of the father upon the child is slight 
compared with the influence of the mother. 
The child is literally bone of her bone, and 
flesh of her flesh; indeed, all the world ac- 
knowledges the predominance, the sovereignty 
of the mother. If, therefore, the Creative Spirit 
is unable to neutralize the influence of the 
father in so far as it is malign, how can he 
overcome the infinitely greater influence of 
the mother in so far as it is unfortunate ? It 
is this view of the subject that gives to the 
miracle in question the appearance of awk- 
wardness and futility. 

Three possibilities are here set before us. 
In the first possibility we are driven back in 
an endless regress of miracle. We are driven 
back from the immaculate child to the im- 
maculate mother, from the immaculate mother 
to the immaculate grandmother, back to the 
immaculate first mother. In the second possi- 
bility we must claim with Edward Irving that 
Jesus derived from his mother a taint in the 
flesh which he overcame in the spirit. In the 
third possibility we hold that in bringing his 



140 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Son into the world the Lord and Giver of life 
lived in the process of natural parenthood, 
controlled its issues, and brought forth the 
perfect, the Divine child. 

Whether he came with miracle or without 
it, Jesus is the same ; whether his life came by 
the path of nature or by the path of miracle, 
it is from God. Of so much we are sure. And 
in our present leanings toward the natural, 
here we appear to have found certain gains. 
We do not like to think that human nature is 
essentially bad, that under God it is incapable 
of the greatest things. We have little patience 
with the preference of the celibate over the 
wedded life. We know how great is the do- 
mestic life of good men and women, and we 
long for the adequate vision of what we believe 
to be the best thins: in our human world. The 
elimination of miracle here seems, therefore, 
to be gain. In one case we have a divine re- 
sult through a miraculous process with the 
infelicity of an implied slur upon parenthood ; 
in the other we have a divine result through a 
natural process with the happiness of having 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 141 

found a new standard and immortal honor for 
the parenthood of the world. 

For myself, as I stand among the wise 
men by the manger in Bethlehem, I forget to 
raise the question, even in thought, how this 
child came to be ; with the wise men, I can 
only open my heart in homage and gifts. If 
at any less inspired time and place I pass in 
thought this scene of tender and transcend- 
ent loveliness back into its utmost beginnings, 
I am sure that I behold nothing but all- 
hallowing, all-transforming love, and in the 
presence of a mystery too full of God for 
mortal vision to pierce, I desire, like the 
prophet of old, to wrap my mantle about my 
face, and answer the Eternal honor that lives 
here, and that lives in the process of natural 
parenthood in all worthy men and women, in 
silent awe and thankful trust. 

When we come to the resurrection of 
Jesus, we come to that which is central in the 
gospel ; apostolic faith and service begin 
here. There is only one mind at this point 
among the teachers and leaders in the apos- 



142 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

tolic community. Peter and James and John 
and Paul had seen the Lord ; they believed in 
a risen Lord ; they served a risen Lord. Paul 
recites the fact that after his death Jesus " ap- 
peared to Cephas ; then to the twelve ; then 
he appeared to above five hundred brethren 
at once, of whom the greater part remain until 
now, but some are fallen asleep ; then he ap- 
peared unto James ; then to all the apostles ; 
and last of all, as to one born out of due 
time, he appeared to me also. . . . Whether 
then it be I or they, so we preach, and so ye 
believed." 1 Here is absolute unanimity of faith 
in the risen Christ. Nothing can be clearer, 
nothing simpler, than this fact ; apostolic life, 
labor, joy, and hope rose out of faith in the 
risen Lord. About this belief among the 
apostles there is no doubt, no uncertainty, 
no shadow of any kind. Our Christian faith 
began with those who were sure that they had 
seen the Lord after his passion ; it began with 
those who were disciples and servants not of 
a dead, but of a living and reigning Christ. 

1 1 Corinthians xv, G-ll. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 143 

Is the bodily resurrection of Jesus essential 
to this faith ? If the physical resurrection is 
denied in the name of natural law, does it 
follow that the spiritual resurrection must be 
unreal? The Gospels seem to describe a 
physical rising from the dead ; Paul's vision 
of Jesus was spiritual. Which form of resur- 
rection is the surer and the mightier, that to 
which the Gospels bear testimony, or that of 
which Paul is the witness ? 

The essential thing here is the assurance 
of a risen Lord ; we are not supremely con- 
cerned about the manner of the resurrec- 
tion ; what we desire is assurance of the fact. 
We desire to know if, after his crucifixion, 
Jesus was able to convince his disciples that 
he was still alive, that he was still with them, 
the source of their life and wisdom and hope. 
It seems to me that if we can be sure that we 
have a living and reigning Lord, we shall not 
be greatly troubled over the manner of his 
resurrection. Did Jesus survive death? Did 
he appear to his disciples after death? Did 
he convince them that he was still alive? 



144 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Did lie continue to convince them that he 
was always with them on to the end of their 
lives ? Of this there can be no doubt. 

They had seen the Lord ; they knew him 
in these appearances as the Lord ; they con- 
tinued to receive his word ; they became con- 
scious that his life in them was more emphatic 
than their own. He was in them the hope 
of glory. Their entire service and character 
was the attestation of the clearness and the 
honesty of their minds upon this fundamental 
question ; they knew him and the power of his 
resurrection. 

What was the ground of their assurance ? 
If we deny the bodily appearance of Jesus 
after death, is not the faith of the apostles 
an illusion ? This leads to another question. 
What is the proof of existence? Is it not 
influence over our lives ? Why do we believe 
in the existence of the external world? We 
do not see it, we do not hear it ; it is not that 
which any sense reports it to be. One sense 
says it is glorious with color, another that it 
is colorless ; one sense reports music in it, 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 145 

another reports eternal silence ; one tells us 
it is hard and cold, another that it is soft 
and hot. These reports make of the external 
world the consummate contradiction. Is it 
anything ? If it is real, how do we know it ? 
Because of its influence over us ; in it we live 
and move and have our physical being. Our 
minds are kept in constant motion by its ap- 
peal. We cannot flee from its presence, we 
cannot escape its power. It is with us when 
awake and when asleep, in childhood, in youth, 
in manhood, and in old age. We awoke at 
birth to feel its breath upon our brow ; we 
sink into the sleep of death drawing upon its 
life with our last breath. Because of its cease- 
less power over us we believe in the reality of 
the external world. 

Why do we believe in the existence of a 
friend ? We have not seen his mind, his soul, 
we know not that he is or what he is by direct 
vision. We believe in him because of his power 
over us. He has molded our intelligence ; he 
has purified and enriched our heart ; he has 
built up into inward strength a great purpose ; 



146 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

he has been a soul of gladness in our exist- 
ence, and because of his power over us we 
believe that he lives. And because that dead 
body heeds not, hears not our call, in no way 
affects us, in no way wields power over us, we 
believe that it is lifeless. Real being is power : 
whatever has power over us is alive ; whatever 
is without power over us is dead. Can we 
frame a better test of real existence than that ? 
Why do we believe in God ? No man hath 
seen God at any time, the senses do not give 
us God. We have been made by life other 
than our own, and we think of him as the 
Lord and Giver of life ; we are touched in 
ten thousand ways, and we think of God as 
the aboriginal impulse under whatever affects 
our beings. We are moved in the pursuit of 
truth, we are lifted in the love of it, we are 
drawn upward into obedience to it, our exist- 
ence is made to take on moral strength and 
value, and our hearts are filled with a thou- 
sand high desires. We believe that the ulti- 
mate source of the grace that thus sweetens 
and shapes our existence is God. He is known 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 147 

by us because of his power over us ; he is 
known as the strength of our heart and our 
portion forever by the availing grace of his 
presence. If God should do nothing for us, if 
he should wield no power over us, if he should 
send us no calls to repentance, no contritions 
of heart, no renewing grace, no abiding in- 
spirations, no lasting solace and hope, we 
should have no evidence of his existence. God 
is not known to sense ; he is not known by 
sense ; he is known to the soul that is renewed 
out of his eternal grace. 

If this test of the living and the real is true, 
we may well compose ourselves concerning the 
manner of the resurrection. Take Peter as an 
example of the believer in the bodily resur- 
rection of Jesus. Which is the greater witness 
to Peter that his Lord is alive and at the right 
hand of God, the fact that on several mys- 
terious occasions he saw Jesus after his pas- 
sion with the eye of flesh, or the fact that 
Jesus has given him out of the unseen a new 
mind, a new heart, a new character, a life in 
which the grace of the Lord is the prevailing 



148 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

power? Which is the greater witness to the 
reality of the risen Lord, the sense of Peter, 
or the soul of Peter made like the soul of 
his Master ? 

in 

This leads us to Paul, the great witness for 
the risen Christ. The relation of Paul to Jesus 
Christ is one of the greatest things in the New 
Testament. With Paul stand all believers in 
Jesus who did not know him, and all who 
could not know him in his earthly life. This 
apostle is the representative of the believing 
world after Jesus had disappeared from the 
earth. He is not only the apostle to the na- 
tions, he is also the apostle to the world that can 
never know Jesus as a human being in time. 

The other apostles were the disciples and 
personal friends of Jesus during his public 
ministry. They were with him in the fields of 
Galilee, by the Sea of Tiberias, in the wide 
expanses beyond the Jordan, in Samaria, in 
the wild solitudes and the crowded villages 
and the cities of Judea. The earth, the sky, 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 149 

and the sea, the wild flowers and the singing 
birds, the great sun as he ran his daily course, 
and the solemn stars were hallowed for those 
disciples by the presence of their Master. So, 
too, the sick, the bereaved, the sinful, the 
proud, all sorts and conditions of human 
beings, — mothers and their children, masters 
and beloved servants, publicans and sinners, 
despairing penitents and complacent rascals, — 
were another framework for the life of Jesus. 
Yet again, these disciples had heard him 
speak. They had been taught by him ; they 
had witnessed his works of healing and the 
perpetual outflow of his efficacious sympa- 
thies. They had heard him speak to God, and 
in his prayer he had carried them to the gate 
of heaven. They had seen the tenderness and 
the majesty of his character. For them the 
life of God looked forth through the life of 
their Lord. This was their unique experience. 
They had a privilege from which the succeed- 
ing world was forever barred. 

When their Master was crucified, when he 
had risen from the dead, they were unable to 



150 RELIGION AND MIKACLE 

think of the heavenly Lord without thinking 
at the same time of the earthly Master. Thus 
the Gospels came to be written, because the 
apostles wanted to preserve the precious, the 
divine memorials of the temporal life of their 
risen Lord. They continued to think of Jesus 
in the heavens as they had seen him in time. 
Even the Fourth Gospel, while a philosophy 
of the career of Jesus, while dating his being 
from the bosom of the Father and conduct- 
ing it after death back into the heart of the 
Eternal, while showing the earthly life of 
Jesus as an interlude between the eternal 
harmonies antecedent and consequent to that 
life, still touches and colors that sublime 
revelation of God with the rich and tender 
humanities in the temporal existence of the 
Lord. Look where you will in the record of 
the twelve apostles, you find emphasis upon 
the teaching, the character, the spirit, and the 
temporal life of Jesus. All this was hallowed 
by his death, all was transfigured by his resur- 
rection, but in substance it abides as the 
gospel of the early apostles. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 151 

To the original disciples of Jesus his resur- 
rection changed the entire aspect of the world. 
Henceforth it lay as in an everlasting sunset, 
traveling in the glow and fire of his sublime 
memory. Nature was transfigured through 
her association with him ; Galilee and Judea, 
Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth, 
were touched with endless pathos and mo- 
ment. Human beings in all the sin and woe 
and tragedy of their lives were hallowed out 
of the divine sanctity of that life. A mystery 
of loveliness had vanished from the world, 
but the memory of it remained to illumine 
and chasten mankind. Never again could the 
disciples look upon the world as it had ap- 
peared to them before they knew Jesus ; never 
again could they see a Christless humanity ; 
they lived, suffered, achieved, and died in 
the divine dream into which Jesus had lifted 
mankind ; they beheld the world eternally 
transfigured in his risen and victorious life. 

We can faintly follow them here. Occasion- 
ally a sublime spirit comes into our sphere of 
being ; once or twice in a lifetime it may 



152 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

have been our privilege to behold the work 
and bearing of some indubitable son of God. 
We looked upon his face as if it had been the 
face of an angel ; we felt the Divine presence 
in his total personality ; we were moved to 
a hidden wonder and love as we drew near in 
friendship to him. Then perhaps came the 
sudden end. When we recovered our self- 
possession, we knew that he was indeed gone, 
but that for us he had left the world still in 
his everlasting evening glow. Such experi- 
ences enable us in a faint way to gain some 
idea of the light and peace in which the van- 
ished Christ forever left the world for the 
original apostles who had known and loved 
him in the days of his flesh. 

The temporal note is absent from Paul's 
experience. He never had any kind of con- 
tact with Jesus in life ; he never saw, he did 
not know Jesus while on the earth. His first 
contact with Jesus is as the risen Lord, as the 
invisible Christ. His vision was never of the 
earthly Jesus ; it was always and only of the 
heavenly Jesus. Paul's contact with Jesus is 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 153 

identical with the contact that men to-day 
may have. He is, as I have said, the great 
representative of the privilege of the world 
after Christ had left the earth; he is our 
representative believer in Christ and, espe- 
cially, in the risen Lord. 

Paul asserts that he had seen Jesus, the 
Lord; his great challenge is, Have I not 
seen Jesus, our Lord ? The story was known 
to all the churches which he had planted; it 
was known wherever he was known. He told 
it as often as opportunity offered, and in 
words of burning conviction and unforgettable 
power. In his great address before Agrippa 
he said : " Whereupon as I journeyed to Da- 
mascus with the authority and commission of 
the chief priests, at midday, king, I saw 
on the way a light from heaven, above the 
brightness of the sun, shining round about 
me and them that journeyed with me. And 
when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard 
a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew lan- 
guage, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ? 
it is hard for thee to kick against the goad. 



154 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

And I said, Who art thou, Lord ? And the 
Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." 
There were doubtless many similar experi- 
ences in the career of Paul. This is initial 
and fundamental. Upon this experience he 
issued his challenge, " Have I not seen Jesus, 
our Lord?" 

Observe, first of all, that this man had first- 
hand contact only with the risen Lord ; he 
had only second-hand contact with the earthly 
Lord ; he was therefore surer of the heavenly 
Jesus than he could be of the earthly Jesus. 
In the reality of the earthly Jesus he believed 
on testimony ; in the reality of the heavenly 
Jesus he believed on experience. He was as 
much surer of the heavenly Jesus than he 
was of the earthly Jesus as experience is surer 
than testimony* He appears to have been free 
from doubt as to the reality of the risen 
Christ. And the fact that Christ was alive 
after death made him confident as the servant 
of Christ that he and all his brethren would 
survive death and live together with the Lord 
in the heavenly world. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 155 

Now, so far as we have any contact at all 
with Jesus, it must be in this way. We have 
the record of his life and teaching, the record 
of what he said, of what he did, of what he 
suffered, of what he was. But the record is 
simply a symbol, a sublime memory. If we 
have contact with Jesus only through the 
record, we have contact only with the precious 
memorials of Jesus ; we are still far away from 
him. We stand at this record of his life as 
the disciples stood at the empty tomb ; to us 
as to them the salutation comes : " He is not 
here ; for he is risen." If we are to have con- 
tact with the living Christ, it can be only 
after the manner of Paul. We must be met 
by him on our way through the world ; we 
must hear his voice out of the invisible ; we 
must get into dialogue with him in the Eter- 
nal; we must be arrested by an immediate 
question from him, "Why persecutest thou 
me?" We must question him in return, — 
"Who art thou, Lord?" We must hear his 
reply, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." 
This vision, under whatever form, is the only 



156 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

first-hand contact that we can have with the 
living soul of Jesus Christ. And where this 
vision answers to Paul's in depth, in intensity, 
in power, men to-day may be as sure as he 
was of the heavenly Lord. 

Notice next how Paul was able to believe 
in the reality of his vision. He knew that the 
world was full of dreams and delusions. He 
could not doubt the reality of his vision, and 
yet he must often ask himself his reason for 
continuing to believe in it. What account 
would he be likely to give to himself of this 
vision ? 

He would doubtless say that this vision had 
revolutionized his whole mind upon the sub- 
ject of Jesus and his religion. He had been 
an enemy ; he was turned into a friend. He 
had been a bitter and violent persecutor ; he 
became a preacher and defender of that of 
which he had formerly made havoc. That 
vision changed his career. 

He would doubtless add that this vision had 
changed his entire manner of thinking about 
God, his people, himself, the nations of man- 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 157 

kind. That vision was the germ for him of a 
new philosophy of man's life and God's char- 
acter. That vision took possession of him as 
a seed takes possession of the earth. It was 
alive in his mind, it grew there, it drew up 
into itself all his thoughts about God and 
man, about the past and the future. It became 
a mighty tree, a living organism of truth, a 
philosophy of our human world. The vision 
that had changed his career wrought this new, 
richer, and mightier mind within the man. 

He would further say that it had changed 
his character. He had always loved righteous- 
ness ; but before that vision came he had been 
mistaken often ; he had been in great straits 
between the command of conscience and the 
clamor of passion; he had been brought in 
his struggle after the ideal life to the edge of 
despair ; he had summed up the sad endeavor 
in the cry, H wretched man that I am, who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " 
Mistaken, outward and formal in his idea of 
righteousness, defeated and broken-hearted in 
his struggle after it, he had been before that 



15S RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

vision came; after its visitation he had be- 
come clear and sound in his thoughts, deep as 
the nature of the soul in his insights, and in 
his pursuit of his goal, a conqueror and more 
than a conqueror through Jesus Christ. The 
fruits of the Spirit now abounded, — love, joy, 
patience, hope, sympathy with sinful and suf- 
fering men, above all, kindness and forbear- 
ance with stupidity and folly. That is nearly 
the supreme grace in a mighty nature, and 
that grace became regnant in Paul. 

He would add still further the character of 
his services and sufferings. He had gone over 
a large part of the Roman Empire several 
times because of that vision. He had preached 
the gospel of Reconciliation through Jesus 
Christ from Damascus and Jerusalem, from 
Asia Minor through Europe as far as Spain. 
He had shaken from their pedestals the gods 
of Greece and Rome, he had established Chris- 
tian faith in a new continent; and he had 
done it under the sense of obligation to that 
vision and because of his delight in its tran- 
scendent reality. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 159 

His sufferings in this service cannot be de- 
scribed, nor the sublime spirit in which they 
were borne. They are part of the world's 
highest canticle of love and woe, part of the 
supreme litany of supreme races, part of the 
deepest and rarest possession of mankind. 
Look in upon this great spirit through the 
words, " In labors more abundantly, in prisons 
more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in 
deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I 
forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten 
with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered 
shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in 
the deep ; in journeyings often, in perils of 
rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils of my 
countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles, in 
perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, 
in perils in the sea, in perils among false 
brethren ; in labor and travail, in watchings 
often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, 
in cold and nakedness. Beside those things 
that are without, there is that which presseth 
upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches. 5 ' 
There is a window into a hero's soul ; but for 



1G0 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

his enemies, he never would have set this win- 
dow there. He begins the story of his suffer- 
ings with the confession that in speaking of 
himself he is speaking as a fool, being com- 
pelled to this folly by foolish men. This career 
of triumphant gladness in a world of contra- 
diction and sorrow came out of that vision. 

The highest wonder has yet to be named. 
This man Paul was one of the great original 
personalities of the world. His nature was 
great in every way ; it was distinctly original. 
In its force it has effected more in the civil- 
ization of Europe than any other that can be 
named. Never did so great a personality sail 
the Mediterranean Sea or cover the surround- 
ing shores with its journeys. And yet this 
mighty personality lived out of the superior 
and supernal personality given in that vision. 
He came to say that he lived, yet not he but 
Christ lived in him, that Christ was within 
him the hope of glory ; so complete, so con- 
tinuous, so full of steadiness and rapt feeling, 
was this surrender of the soul of Paul in time 
to the soul of Jesus in eternity. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 161 

This is the outline of Paul's reason for his 
faith in the risen Lord. The Lord Jesus had 
changed him from a persecutor to a preacher 
of the gospel ; he had changed the entire 
organism of his thinking; he had changed 
his experience from despair to triumph as a 
servant of the moral ideal ; he had sent him 
over an empire as a prophet of the Eternal 
love ; he had enabled him to endure nameless 
sufferings and glory in them that he might 
thereby show forth the power of his Master. 
Paul's life came out of his faith in the risen 
Lord. With such a life as issue, could he 
reasonably doubt the Divine reality of the 
cause? Not till something can come from 
nothing, not till wholesome living can come 
from delusions, not till it can be shown that 
all that is deepest and divinest in the life of 
man comes from lies, shall we dare to say 
that Paul's faith in the reality of his vision 
of the risen Lord is vain. 

The question comes, Is this assurance of 
the risen Lord open to us? In reading his 
words, in dwelling upon the stories of his 



162 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

resurrection, in pondering what he has been 
to his disciples in all these centuries, there 
has come upon us a vision of Jesus as alive 
and at the right hand of God. We now ask 
this question : How can we be sure that Jesus 
is alive, that he is the risen Lord ? 

If we have met him on our way to an evil 
goal, if his spirit has risen out of his words 
and stood across the path of our evil progress, 
if he has arrested us in shameful thoughts 
or intentions, if he has blinded us with excess 
of light on some secret sin, or some duty that 
we have scorned, if he by his moral illumina- 
tion and appeal has made it impossible for us 
to go on in our wickedness, if he has turned 
us from wild infatuation with error and 
wrong to duty and to C od, there is one tre- 
mendous witness to the reality of our risen 
Lord. He has risen up like a new watershed 
in our existence ; he has turned our whole 
being in a new direction ; lie has made it 
impossible that we should again flow where 
we have flowed, that we should again seek 
that old and evil goal. 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 163 

Have we gone on from this initial experi- 
ence as Paul did ? Have we come to read the 
meaning of the soul, the family, the nation, 
the history of man, the total of our human 
existence, and the character of the Eternal 
through the eyes of Jesus? Have we come 
into a body of ideas of which he is the teacher 
and inspirer ? Have we found under his in- 
fluence duty a delight, obligation a privilege, 
service a song? Is there in progress within 
us a vast alienation from the selfish, the 
brutal life, a vast reconciliation to the will 
of God ? If this or anything like this is true, 
there is a second witness to the reality of the 
risen Lord. 

Have we ever done anything for his sake ? 
Have we confessed his name before men, stood 
forth before the world in the solemn privilege 
of membership in his kingdom, given a cup 
of cold water because we saw in the needy 
one his brother, clothed the destitute, visited 
the sick, remembered the forgotten, gone on 
our way doing good following in his footsteps, 
holding forth through a just and tender char- 



164 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

acter his word of life, joining with all who 
truly love him in the service of the souls of 
men, as poor yet making many rich, as sorrow- 
ful yet always rejoicing, as having nothing 
yet possessing all things? If this is the char- 
acter of our life, or anything the least like 
this, we have still another witness to the 
reality of the Lord in heaven. 

The strength of the entire New Testament 
is the assurance that Jesus is alive. The assur- 
ance came to the twelve through what they 
believed to be physical appearances. The 
assurance came to Paul through a vision, 
through an experience in his mind and soul. 
The assurance is the supreme thing, and con- 
cerning this all the apostles are at one. The 
assurance of Paul is mightier to-day because 
we may gain it for ourselves. We cannot see 
the empty grave, we cannot walk with Jesus 
from Jerusalem to Emmaus ; w r e cannot hear 
hi in speak to us from the shore of the sea, 
calling us to dine. The form of assurance 
peculiar to the original apostles is inaccessible 
to us. If their faith becomes our faith, it is 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 165 

through our faith in them. With the form 
of assurance for which Paul stands it is differ- 
ent. His whole new being was the witness of 
the truth of his faith ; he had no eye-sight, 
no outward material evidence ; it was all a 
transaction in his intellect and character. 
When w r e have his experience or something 
like it, we shall have his assurance. For those 
who do not think, the outw r ard witness, the 
eye-sight of the apostles is easy ; it is a wit- 
ness that may be accepted by selfish and god- 
less men. For men who think, who wonder 
how these things can be, the bodily resur- 
rection of Jesus is a puzzle, and the peace 
longed for does not come. The inward 
witness from all the apostles, and especially 
from Paul, is nothing to the unspiritual 
man ; it can be gained only through personal 
experience, only through renewal in Christ, 
only through service under him, only by the 
path of a great soul. To this our Lord is 
bringing us. If we will not rise into new- 
ness of life with Christ, we can never know 
him. When with him we stand at our being's 



166 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

height, we shall know that our Redeemer 
liveth ; life comes from lif e, — the life of the 
body from the life of the body, the life of the 
soul from the life of the soul. If we live in 
Christ, if we live by him, when we look up 
we shall see him, according to his word, on 
the clouds of heaven, we shall see him as 
Stephen beheld him at the right hand of God. 
I conclude, therefore, that the fate of Jesus 
and his gospel is in no way bound up with 
the fate of miracle* It is evident, even if 
naturalism is to control men's views of all 
history, that the really great things in Christ 
and his gospel abide. His teaching abides, his 
character is safe, his spiritual leadership is 
unquestioned. He is still our Prophet, Priest, 
and King. His risen and glorified life in God 
remains attested by the witness of life. Only 
the fringe of his evangelical career is torn 
away. We lose the stilling of the storm, the 
walking on the sea, the feeding of the mul- 
titudes, the raising of the widow's only son 
and the dead Lazarus. We lose something, 
no doubt, and the loss, if it should become 



JESUS CHRIST AND MIRACLE 167 

inevitable, will be painful to many. But even 
here there is evidence of the greatness of our 
Lord. That he wrought wonders upon the 
physical life of men is beyond dispute. That 
he gained access to the souls of the plain 
people by his marvelous power as the healer 
of physical distress is not open to question. 
That he took the imagination of the people 
captive is attested by the tradition of wonders 
that came to invest his career. To all seri- 
ous minds, part of the evidence of the power 
of Jesus Christ will always be the epic of mira- 
cle embedded in his career. How great that 
epic is, it would be difficult to say ; of what 
divine things it is the reflection, men may one 
day become noble enough to discover. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 



^TT7~HAT are the essential things in the 
* * faith, in the ideals, in the experience 
and hope of a disciple of Jesus Christ to-day ? 
It may be said that the disciple of to-day 
tries to take his place in the school of Christ. 
Somehow the Master becomes to him a liv- 
ing presence; the recorded remark, sermon, 
and parable are heard as if from the lips of 
the Divine speaker ; the time, the scene, and 
the events of the evangelical record yield the 
vision of the great Teacher. Other disciples 
surround the Lord, and among them the 
honest and devout disciple of to-day. 

In the school of Christ, recovered by the 
religious imagination working upon the Gos- 
pels, the disciple of to-day tries to read 
the meaning of the universe and the purpose 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 169 

and scope of human life through the mind of 
Jesus. He looks at the Infinite through the 
soul of Jesus and says with him, " Our Father 
who art in heaven"; he looks upon his fellow 
men through that same Divine soul, and he 
sees that they are his brothers, bone of his 
bone and flesh of his flesh ; he looks again, 
and this time the vision of Jesus leads him to 
unite in one vast family the Father in heaven 
and his children in the earth. He is further 
led by his Teacher to see that the total good 
of man is conveyed in the great prayer, " Thy 
kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as 
it is in heaven." Thus the disciple of to-day 
tries to gain the vision of Jesus, to form his 
intellect in that vision, to make it the sub- 
stance and spirit of his philosophy of human 
existence and of the universe in which that ex- 
istence finds itself. 

There is now a question of the moral nature 
to be considered, a relation of feeling and will 
to the vision of Jesus. The disciple of to-day 
who tries to think of God and man more and 
more as Christ thought of them sees that this 



170 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ideal involves two others. It sets before him 
the ideal of the heart and of the active spirit. 
He must more and more feel toward God and 
man as Jesus felt; he must more and more 
behave as Jesus behaved. He must aim to 
reproduce in himself the most perfect trust in 
the righteous will of God and take into his 
being out of the being of the Highest his 
eternal magnanimity. He must consider the 
world of men as on the whole a noble but 
awful tragedy ; he must regard it with patience, 
sympathy, compassion ; his heart must aim at 
becoming more and more the heart of Christ. 
To this he must add the force of a Christian 
will. He entertains his Master's vision of the 
kingdom of God, and toward the progressive 
realization of that kingdom in the face of the 
selfishness and brutality of the world he con- 
secrates himself. This is the great test, as it 
is the chief privilege, of his discipleship. He 
sees that finally all the worth of the intellect 
and the heart come to the test of action. 
Religion is only a potentiality while it remains 
vision and passion ; only as vision and passion 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 171 

press for expression in action do they become 
real. The Christian religion is ultimately a 
vision and a passion that declare themselves 
as true through the floodgates of the trium- 
phant good will. Good will is the last and 
highest beatitude of God; good will is the 
final grace of the Lord Jesus; good will is 
the ultimate and sure test of Christian disci- 
pleship yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

In addition to faith and ideals the disciple 
of Jesus has hopes. His greatest hope for 
himself is that some day he shall answer in 
moral integrity and purity to the soul of his 
Master. His greatest hope for human society 
is the advent of the new heaven and the new 
earth wherein shall dwell righteousness. Out 
of these sovereign moral hopes comes the hope 
of life everlasting, the conservation of all 
genuine love, the renewal of earth's essential 
relationships in the eternal world, the redemp- 
tion of man, and the society of man redeemed 
in the heavenly sphere. 

In this account of the faith, the ideals, 
and the hopes of the disciple of Christ to- 



172 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

day, I have said nothing about miracle. Is 
this an oversight, or is it natural or right ? 
The question may now be raised upon what do 
Christian men and women live to-day? Do 
we live upon miracle or upon the Spirit? 
Do we depend upon the revelation of Spirit 
through the miraculous or through the nat- 
ural ? Such a question brings one back to the 
method of God in dealing with human beings 
to-day. Miracles do not occur in our genera- 
tion. Mortal sickness is not healed, our dead 
are not brought back to life, there is no voice 
that stills the tempests on our seas, no one 
can bid us walk upon the waters and save us 
when we fail through want of faith, no gra- 
cious hand to-day multiplies the meagre food- 
supply in starving homes. 

The interest of suffering men and women 
to-day in these miracles of our Lord must be a 
pathetic interest. The cry must come up from 
bereaved parents, " He restored to life the little 
girl of Jairus, why does he not restore our 
child? " " He raised from the bier in Nain the 
widow's only son, why does he not give me 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 173 

back my strong staff and beautiful rod ?" cries 
another solitary mourner. He had compas- 
sion upon the bereaved sisters in Bethany and 
raised their brother from death, and has he 
no pity upon similar sorrow now ? The lame, 
the halt, the blind, and the leper are still with 
us, but there is no helper. What avails it 
for our sufferers to read of the deliverance 
wrought for a few of the multitudes that suf- 
fered in that ancient time ? For that ancient 
world the relief was meagre when measured 
against the immeasurable need and agony. 
And when one surveys the world to-day, even 
that mitigation is nowhere to be found ; 
among sane minds it is nowhere expected. 
The natural order is supreme ; and we do not 
dream that God will work miracles in our 
behalf, or in behalf of any man. When our 
children are taken out of our arms, we do not 
look for their return. We say with a great 
sorrowing father three thousand years ago, 
" I shall go to him, but he shall not return to 
me." There is no discharge in this war; there 
is none, and we expect none. We in our gen- 



174 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

eration are beset behind and before and on 
either side by a natural order fixed as fate. 

This sense of law determines the spiritual 
life of reasonable men. Whether we accept or 
deny the miracles of Jesus, we pass them by, 
or we treat them as symbols of spiritual truth. 
We do not live upon the wonders of the 
Lord ; we live upon his words, his thoughts, 
his prayers, his spirit. We commune with him 
on the way. The secret of life is to know 
him, to share his vision, to become partakers 
of his passion, to rise with him to newness of 
life. We support ourselves by his great utter- 
ances : " He that believeth on me shall not 
see death. Because I live, ye shall live also. 
Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end 
of the world." The experience of Paul sets 
the ideal for all disciples : " Nevertheless I 
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Here 
we are out of the region of miracle ; we are 
in a far higher world, we are in the world of 
soul and love and triumphant life. 

I have spoken of Paul as the most impress- 
ive witness for the faith in the risen Lord. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 175 

I now say that the chief significance of this 
faith for Paul was in the moral assurance it 
brought in his fight for righteousness. He 
had indeed seen Jesus ; he knew that his Lord 
was risen and reigning, but beyond this, the 
chief moment of Jesus to Paul was as the re- 
vealer and mediator of the Infinite righteous- 
ness. Dearly had Paul loved righteousness 
from his earliest years, and sorely had he 
failed to gain it. The vision of Jesus became 
for him a new conception of righteousness, a 
new power of achievement and a new hope. 
It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that 
the significance of Jesus to Paul was signifi- 
cance for the spirit. His great words are, 
"Even though we have known Christ after 
the flesh, yet now we know him so no more." 
In the writings ascribed to the Apostle 
John great emphasis is laid upon the fact 
that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. The 
historical life of Jesus is inexpressibly dear 
and important to this apostle. It is dear and 
important as the expression of the sovereign 
soul of his Master, as the revelation of the 



176 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

eternal love of God. His greatest words are : 
God is light, and in him is no darkness at 
all " ; and to this corresponds the self -charac- 
terization of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, for 
which we are plainly indebted to the same 
writer : " I am the light of the world : he 
that folio weth me shall not walk in the dark- 
ness, but shall have the light of life." The 
other words of this apostle, which some will 
consider even greater than those just quoted, 
are: " God is love." And of this eternal love 
Jesus Christ is the one adequate assurance. 
Here again the whole higher character of 
Christianity is in the realm of the spirit. 

If we look into the minds of the greater 
witnesses of our faith in Christian history, we 
shall find the same general result. For Clement 
of Alexandria and Origen Jesus was revealer 
and life-giver. The experience of Augustine 
is a new version of the experience of Paul ; 
the gospel was a message to his sinful soul, a 
message that became a deliverance. Augus- 
tine's greatest book is his " Confessions " ; it 
contains the heart of his Christian faith, and 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 177 

into its words he has poured the fullness of 
his mind and spirit. It is a book that can 
never grow old; it is full of God, full of 
Christ, full of the soul to whom God in Christ 
had become perpetual vision and eternal solace. 
Luther goes back through Augustine to Paul, 
and righteousness by faith is the cry with 
which he awakened Europe. Calvin dwells 
not upon miracle, but upon the sovereign God. 
Indeed, wherever one looks among the really 
great souls, one finds them building either 
upon ideas, or upon the gracious experience 
into which these ideas are translated by the 
Holy Spirit. Cardinal Newman writes an 
acute and sophistical essay on ecclesiastical 
miracles, and good men pass it by in pity. 
He writes of the visitations of God to the 
souls of men, and the world still reads what 
is written. Newman, the consummate special 
pleader for incredible dogmas, is the subject 
of compassion ; Newman, the religious genius, 
is dear to the whole Christian church. In his 
greatest book Bushnell writes a chapter on 
miracles, in which to-day no one has any real 



178 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

interest ; he writes sermons for the human 
spirit that will be a possession for many gener- 
ations. Edwards is more and more engaging 
profound minds, not so much on account of 
his scheme of doctrine, as on account of the 
depth and splendor of his religious experience. 
The greatest influence on Christian faith in 
the nineteenth century came from Schleier- 
macher and Maurice ; and in both these think- 
ers the chief excellence is range of spiritual 
vision and depth of life. 

If I am right in these remarks, religious men 
are men of the spirit, Christian men are men of 
the spirit, and the sphere in which they live is 
not the world of miracle, but the world of Di- 
vine life. For them law is the speech of God> 
and as our own tongue in its order of moods 
and tenses, in its living and beautiful idioms, is 
the best possible instrument for the expression 
of the thought and love and character of friend 
or parent or child, as we should be put to 
confusion if the human soul in its regard for 
us should depart from the law of reasonable 
speech, so modern religious men think of God. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 179 

The order of nature is his speech; its laws 
are the idioms of his tongue ; its fixed ways 
are the steadfast manner of his language; 
and in and through this instrument he dis- 
covers to the religious soul his mind and heart. 
The natural order is thus crowded with ideas ; 
through it ideas break as from human speech ; 
from it they work their power as from the 
countenance of man. Here indeed we have 
our chief example of the union of mechanism 
and spirit. Human life is a mechanism of 
cause and effect, it is life under law — ana- 
tomical, physiological, economical, terrestrial. 
It is an organism in strict subjection to law; 
birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death 
are events in a living organism under law; 
but as Aristotle said long ago, the truth or 
meaning of this organism is spirit. Death is 
organism minus the spirit that gives it truth 
and meaning. The infant becomes to its 
mother, when only a few months old, a mind 
and heart. The charm of its manner is the 
charm of a soul learning to express itself 
through the law-bound organism in which it 



180 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

lives. The smile of an infant is a fact in phys- 
iology ; it is an event under physiological 
law ; and at the same time it is a radiant dis- 
closure of spirit. Again and again the mother 
will work and wait for the contraction of those 
muscles, as men were wont to wait till the 
descent of an angel troubled the pool, that 
the soul of her child may become radiantly 
visible. Through life the same law holds. 
Looks of infinite tenderness are the supreme 
signs between those who love ; these looks at 
meeting and parting, at all the crises and 
surprises of existence, in life and in death, 
are events of physiology ; they take place in 
a purely natural way ; they are the orderly 
phases of the physical organism, and think of 
the worlds of meaning, high, solemn, beau- 
tiful, that they bear and utter. The body 
of a friend is the noble and dear mechanism 
through which the soul declares its invio- 
lable order of truth, love, character. When 
Ruth revealed her soul to Naomi, she did 
it through word, voice, accent, attitude, man- 
ner, look. These were all regular phases of 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 181 

her physical existence ; and how the interior 
world of honor stood in them, and how great 
they became as the servants of that world : 
" Intreat me not to leave thee, and to return 
from following after thee : for whither thou 
goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I 
will lodge : thy people shall be my people, 
and thy God my God : where thou diest, will 
I die, and there will I be buried : the Lord do 
so to me, and more also, if aught but death 
part thee and me." There in human life is 
mechanism in the service of spirit, and the 
mechanism is hallowed by the burden that it 
is made to bear. When the blind (Edipus 
hears the voice of Antigone and is led forth 
by her, when Lear, bound upon a wheel of 
fire, looks up into the face of Cordelia, does 
not the mechanism of the human body declare 
a world of soul? In our human life mechanism 
and spirit meet ; here this mechanism is not 
in the way of spirit; it is an essential servant, 
and as such it stands in honor. 

This is the simplest path to the world 
of the Eternal Spirit. In the cosmos and in 



182 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

human society he dwells and utters himself. 
We construe the universe in the light of our 
own life ; we are mechanism and spirit ; in 
our existence mechanism is the indispensable 
servant of spirit; and so we dare to think 
of God. His laws in nature are his ways of 
revealing the content of his mind there ; his 
ways with man are the fixed order through 
which he utters his regard for him. When 
man becomes a religious soul, when love flows 
between the finite soul and the Infinite, the 
order of life and death, the mechanism of 
nature in which our being is set, is trans- 
figured. In that order there is felt the pressure 
of God's hand, the fullness of God's smile, 
the infinite meaning in the wild tragedy of 
existence, the depth of God's good will. 

Look now at the career of Jesus from this 
point of view. His body is the mechanism 
that bears the burden of his great soul. His 
soul is an order of thoughts and feelings and 
purposes that bears in itself the consciousness 
of God and his thoughts and feelings and 
purposes toward man. The life of Jesus serves 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 183 

a double end: it expresses his soul; it also 
expresses the soul of God as God lives in him. 
All this is independent of miracle ; it does 
not even suggest miracle. Mechanism of body 
is the basis of this expression of Jesus as he 
lives in God. The word was made flesh ; the 
organism of the body became the revealer of 
the spirit. At every step forward in his career 
this is the central truth in the life of Jesus. 
He spoke, he lived a human life under law : 
and at every turn his speech, his life, bore the 
burden of a divine meaning. His infancy in 
Bethlehem, his boyhood and youth in Naza- 
reth, his public ministry of teaching and heal- 
ing, the phases of his organic existence, were 
the instruments of his spirit, and of God as 
God lived in his spirit. Thus through the 
temporal life of Jesus in part and in whole 
the Eternal was uttered. The effect upon the 
religious soul of the natural order of the life of 
Jesus as the bearer and revealer of the life 
of God may find its symbol in the effect upon 
the penitent thief of these words: " To-day 
shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Here is 



184 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

the mechanism of the human voice. Could 
any miracle equal the sweetness and the power 
of that mechanism ? Could any wonder bear 
to a soul in darkness the assurance of the 
Eternal conveyed by that mechanism? As 
was the voice of Jesus then, such was his 
whole life, an order of nature revealing the 
eternal kingdom of the spirit. 

ii 

The final cause of the discipline in doubt 
to which Christian men are subjected in our 
time would seem to be that they may be 
brought back to the world of the spirit that 
fills and transfigures the natural order of the 
cosmos and of human life. The great condi- 
tion of this mighty return to the immediate 
world of the spirit is freedom. For the first 
time since the apostolic age, the Christian re- 
ligion is held and studied in our day in the 
atmosphere of freedom. For Protestantism, 
all religion is the subject of study in the world 
of freedom ; and for Catholicism, religion is 
engaged in a determined struggle to regard 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 185 

itself in the light of the free intellect. This 
is something new under the sun. Never has 
freedom of mind so reigned in the things of 
the spirit as it reigns to-day. Indeed, compul- 
sion has reigned so long in the sphere of faith 
that great souls have been again and again 
tormented with the question whether they 
were believers on authority, or on insight into 
the essential nature of their belief. Never till 
this day has faith had the opportunity that 
now confronts it, the opportunity to declare 
through complete intellectual freedom what 
is incidental in its own life and what is essen- 
tial and permanent. For Christian faith this 
inexpressible privilege has been long in com- 
ing, and now that it is here we hail it as 
a vast hope. This hope may be to many a 
terrible visitation of fear. Even then it can- 
not be denied that freedom has arrived. What 
Kant said of his age is much more true of our 
age : " This may be best characterized as the 
age of criticism — a criticism to which every- 
thing must submit." A new mood has arisen 
in the sphere of religion ; it fills the educated 



186 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

world ; it reaches the entire intelligence of 
the time. Is this new mood for better, or for 
worse? What of the future of our faith at 
its hands ? What of the future of those be- 
liefs that have hitherto been the perennial 
fountain, or at least the indispensable chan- 
nel, of our greatest inspirations ? Are we per- 
mitted now to work and to feel as of old? 
Are we forbidden to think as of old? How 
long can work and feeling go forward when 
thought has lost its hold upon the Eternal ? 
Does the change in thought mean only a 
vaster thought and thus a prof ounder feeling, 
and a mightier activity for Christian right- 
eousness ? In the new mood of the age, are 
we confronted, like ancient Israel, by a pos- 
sible blessing and a possible curse? In our 
hope and in our fear is there balm in Gilead ? 
Is there a physician there? The intellectual 
world, the spiritual world, the Christian world 
is in movement. Whither is it bound ? Who 
is its leader and Lord ? When the sea breaks 
its immemorial bounds, is there any law or 
force upon which one may look for the con- 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 187 

trol of the fearful flood ? When Christian 
scholars, teachers, preachers, disciples of the 
Lord have, in one degree or another, aban- 
doned immemorial traditions, is there any 
Guide on whom we may rely for the conser- 
vation of the best in history, and for the con- 
trol and happy issue of the whole daring 
movement of man's spirit ? 

There is indeed much confusion to-day in 
the field of belief, and much need of patience. 
Parents have dedicated to the ministry of 
Christ the son whose entire existence has been 
covered by their prayers. They have sent him 
to college, and there he has stood in the heart 
of the world's great debate between theism 
and atheism, a knowable God and an unknow- 
able, history as an optimism and history as 
the interminable desert of despair. In college 
he has been trained to think, to question every 
affirmation, to try the spirits that he might 
know their worth. Is it strange that, under 
this discipline, — and there is no other disci- 
pline that is intellectually decent, — their son 
should come forth with a high spirit, a vigor- 



188 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ous understanding, and a somewhat attenu- 
ated body of belief ? They send this son to 
the divinity school. The mood of the age is 
still with him. In the modern seminary he 
stands in the heart of the great debate about 
the Bible. How came the Old Testament to 
be what it is ? How came the New Testament 
to be what it is ? How much is authentic his- 
tory ? How much, if any, is myth or legend 
or the accretion of the creative imagination 
of after-times ? In answer to these questions 
their son hears a multitude of conflicting 
tongues, and Babel itself seems peaceful and 
beautiful order compared with this unsilence- 
able and endless uproar. Again, is it strange 
that their son, when he presents himself for 
ordination as a minister of Jesus Christ, 
should be somewhat uncertain, and perhaps 
unsatisfactory, in his statement of faith ? 
They cannot blame him ; they know the 
honor of his soul, the integrity of his intel- 
lect, the deep and tender veneration of his 
heart for his Master ; they know that he 
stands ready to confess him in service and in 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 189 

sacrifice and unto tears and blood. They can- 
not blame him ; why should they blame his 
teachers, why should they blame any one? 
The mood of the age is upon us all ; whither 
shall we go from its spirit, or whither shall 
we flee from its presence? If we take the 
wings of the morning and dwell in the utter- 
most parts of the sea, even there shall the 
mood of the time confront us. If we ascend 
up into heaven, it is there ; if we make our 
bed in hell, it is there ; it is with us in the 
darkness and in the light ; it is the shadow 
of God in the mind of educated man ; as the 
shadow of God we must behold it, we must 
implore its meaning, we must beg for its 
name. 

The profoundest meaning of the vast and 
restless mood that is upon us, I believe to be 
the Divine intention to throw us back upon 
God, the Holy Ghost. If natural law seems to 
be inviolable, if there appears to be no longer 
any room left for miracle, it is that the whole 
creation may appear miraculous, the garment 
that God is weaving for himself on the roar- 



190 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ing looms o£ time, under the eyes of the liv- 
ing. For a few miracles hard to grasp, we are 
bidden behold a miraculous universe, where 
all things depend upon, where all things re- 
veal, the mystery of the Infinite will. No man 
is intellectually justified in denying the pos- 
sibility of the miracles of Jesus ; he does 
not know enough to deny. No man has a 
right to make the glory of Christianity de- 
pend upon the miracle. Does the Fourth 
Gospel mean nothing in setting the life of 
Jesus into the life of the world, and back 
into the life of the universe, and up into the 
life of the Eternal God, without the aid of 
miracle ? Consider which is the grander, the 
story of the incarnation according to Luke, or 
the same story according to John. 

If the Bible appears to be no longer an 
infallible book, it is that men may come to 
know the Divine inspirer of it. The Bible 
seems to me to have gained immeasurably in 
the process of scientific examination. The 
humanity of the Bible is monumental; and 
this monumental humanity enables us to lay 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 191 

hold with new assurance upon the Eternal 
humanity. " The burdens of the Bible old " 
are still out of the Infinite. In the lyric and 
epic utterance of supreme souls one still hears 
the accent of the Holy Ghost. In the oracle 
of the prophet, in the epistle of the apostle, 
and in the eternal wisdom and tenderness of 
the teaching of Jesus, we still rise as on wings 
into the presence of the Most High. Theories 
about the Bible are born and die like the 
swarms of insects in summer ; but the Bible 
in its really great books remains what it has 
always been — the monumental witness to 
the presence in man of the Holy Ghost. If 
we live in God, we shall see that the Bible 
lives in God; if God lives in us, we shall 
know that God lives in the Bible. 

Even the uncertainty about the person of 
Jesus Christ, which I deplore, seems to me to 
be, in a way, providential. " It is expedient 
for you that I go away " ; so spoke the Lord. 
The religion of Jesus Christ is, after all, 
the religion of the Holy Ghost. The church 
is the church of the risen Lord ; the church 



192 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

began in the consciousness of the risen and 
reigning Christ. It can never be, without out- 
rage upon history, without revolt from Chris- 
tian reason, the church of the dead Christ. 
With this fountain of organized Christianity 
sure, with this consciousness rising and termi- 
nating in the Lord who abolished death, we 
have nothing to fear. Behind that, below 
that, sane criticism cannot go. And with this 
consciousness as channel, there comes in upon 
us, if we will but open the gates, the floods 
of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit thus be- 
comes the hope of the church. If we have the 
Holy Spirit, he will guide us into all truth; 
he will recover to faith and life the truth 
that the church may from time to time lose. 
Thinking, believing, doing, living in the 
strength of the Holy Ghost — there is no 
hope save in that experience ; and for the 
soul and for the church in that experience, 
there is nothing but hope. What if all the 
criticism and uncertainty of the age shall 
prove a Divine discipline toward this issue ? 
What is the final beatitude for man but that 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 193 

he shall live and move and have his being 
full of love and awe, in God? For what do 
we hope when we pray that the tabernacle of 
God may be with men ? For what do we long 
when, in the language of the Apocalypse, we 
behold the holy city, the New Jerusalem, with 
no temple therein, save the soul of God om- 
nipresent and omnipotent, in the social life 
of the race ? 

The outgoing mariner leaves much behind. 
The dear shores fade from his sight; the 
beloved land sinks deeper and deeper under 
the horizon ; but these shores and that land 
do not cease to be ; they remain part of the 
order of the world, and the buoyant and 
benign sea goes with him, floating him on 
its joyous floods, and fanning him with its 
strong winds, till he anchors in the harbor 
whither he is bound. The recorded gospel, 
the recorded Christ, we leave behind as the 
swift years roll, as the great centuries pass. 
That Divine life in Galilee and in Judea 
is far away from our time. We may weep 
that it is forever receding from the successive 



194 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

generations of men ; but we must not forget 
that it is part of the history of the race, that 
it is the abiding and the supreme human 
memorial, and the glorious deep of the Holy 
Ghost goes forward with us ; it is under the 
keel of the church. Its currents are all toward 
good. Its winds are the prevailing forces 
in all progress ; and with this element under 
us, and with these inspirations behind us, fill- 
ing the sails of faith, and blowing into white 
heat the great furnaces of love, we have every- 
thing to hope and nothing to fear. 

The secret of existence for the individual 
Christian and for the whole body of Christians 
is in a life in the life of God ; in a life that can- 
not be plucked out of his hand, that cannot be 
torn from fellowship with him. The Christ of 
yesterday and the Christ of to-morrow are in 
the keeping of the Christ of to-day. The divine 
past and the divine future are safe, utterly 
safe, when held in the divine present. God 
is our refuge, a present help in time of trouble. 
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth 
be removed and the sea roar and be troubled. 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 195 

The planet goes forever forward, but it takes 
with it its atmosphere, and when the storms 
are still, it looks through that atmosphere, as 
through a vast window, upon the numberless 
shining worlds among which it rolls. Let the 
moving church take with it the faith, the 
experience, the protection, the infinite gift of 
the Holy Ghost. Let it roll forward in the 
heart of this mystery of encasing deity ; let 
it view all worlds of science and art and phi- 
losophy and government, all the shining moods 
of human culture, and all the blasted survivals 
of departed glory, through the infinite trans- 
parency and peace of the Eternal Spirit. 

in 

If now we raise the question, How are we 
to create belief in Christ and his gospel to- 
day, I know of no better approach to the 
final answer to that question than by a sym- 
pathetic study of Arnold's poem, " Rugby 
Chapel.' ' We recall at once the vision of the 
dead father in the gloom of the autumn even- 
ing:— 



196 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Coldly, sadly descends 

The autumn evening. The field 

Strewn with its dank yellow drifts 

Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, 

Fade into dimness apace, 

Silent ; — hardly a shout 

From a few boys late at their play ! 

The lights come out in the street, 

In the school-room windows ; — but cold, 

Solemn, unlighted, austere, 

Through the gathering darkness, arise 

The chapel- walls, in whose bound 

Thou, my father ! art laid. 

We recall, too, the poet's recoil from the 
gloom of the scene as he thinks of the radi- 
ant vigor and the buoyant cheerfulness of his 
father : — 

Such thou wast ! and I stand 

In the autumn evening, and think 

Of bygone autumn with thee. 

Fifteen years have gone round 
Since thou arosest to tread, 
In the summer-morning, the road 
Of death, at a call unforeseen, 
Sudden. For fifteen years, 
We who till then in thy shade 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 197 

Rested as under the boughs 
Of a mighty oak, have endured 
Sunshine and rain as we might, 
Bare, unshaded, alone, 
Lacking the shelter of thee ! 

From this vision there flows faith in the 
persistence of that soul, faith that some- 
where, — 

Still thou performest the word 

Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live — 

Prompt, unwearied, as here ! 

Then the poet turns to consider the course of 
the life of mortal men on the earth. There is, 
first, the aimless, unmeaning life that lives in 
vanity and dies unregarded. There is, second, 
the life of the valiant, victorious individualist 
who breaks away from his companions, leaves 
them to perish in the storm, and who alone 
comes to his goal. There is, third, the Chris- 
tian hero ; let us listen to the poet again : — 

But thou wouldst not alone 
Be saved, my father ! alone 
Conquer and come to thy goal, 
Leaving the rest in the wild. 



198 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

We were weary, and we 
Fearful, and we in our march 
Fain to drop down and to die. 
Still thou turnedst, and still 
Beckonedst the trembler, and still 
Gavest the weary thy hand ! 

If, in the paths of the world, 
Stones might have wounded thy feet, 
Toil or dejection have tried 
Thy spirit, of. that we saw 
Nothing — to us thou wast still 
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm ! 
Therefore to thee it was given 
Many to save with thyself ; 
And, at the end of thy day, 
O faithful shepherd ! to come, 
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 

Here is the human life as leader, inspirer, 
saviour of other human lives; here is the 
way of faith. The hero whom we have 
known, the man of God, the lover of his 
kind, the helper of the weak, enables us to 
renew the vision of the servants of God and 
man in the past, enables us, through all the 
precious memorials of their lives, to behold 
and believe in the mighty succession of the 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 199 

witnesses for the Eternal, lifts us to the con- 
sciousness of Jesus and his kingdom, to the 
consciousness of God and his divine regard 
for man. The greatest miracle that might be 
wrought would appear impotent in the pre- 
sence of the living, reasonable witness for the 
things of the spirit, for the things of Christ, 
of a great and good man. What we need to 
renew our faith in the Highest in the uni- 
verse, in Jesus the highest in time, is not 
conversion to faith in the miraculous, but the 
privilege of seeing again God in Christ work- 
ing in the thought and feeling and action of 
men of our own day. The contemporary Chris- 
tian is the best guide to the historic Master ; 
the contemporary communicant of the Eternal 
is the highest witness for the reality of the 
reigning Christ and his kingdom of love. 
Arnold was spare in his positive beliefs, but 
here he lays in clear light and peace the way 
of the soul to the richest faith. 

And through thee I believe 

In the noble and great who are gone ; 



200 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Yes ! I believe that there lived 
Others like thee in the past, 
Not like the men of the crowd 
Who all round me to-day 
Bluster or cringe, and make life 
Hideous, and arid, and vile ; 
But souls temper'd with fire, 
Fervent, heroic, and good, 
Helpers and friends of mankind. 

Ye alight in our van ! at your voice, 
Panic, despair, flee away. 
Ye move through the ranks, recall 
The stragglers, refresh the outworn, 
Praise, re-inspire the brave ! 
Order, courage, return ; 
Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 
Follow your steps as ye go. 
Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
Strengthen the wavering line, 
Stablish, continue our march, 
On, to the bound of the waste, 
On, to the City of God ! 

Two great principles underlie this whole 
discussion of miracle and religion. These are 
the scientific conception of law and the reli- 
gious conception of the immanence of God 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 201 

in the cosmos and in man. The scientific con- 
ception of law as a generalization from a wide 
induction of facts was presented in the early- 
part of this discussion. The religious concep- 
tion of the immanence of God in the cosmos 
and in man has been basal in our consideration 
of miracle and the belief in God, in our exam- 
ination of miracle in relation to Jesus and his 
gospel, and in our remarks upon the world in 
which religious men live to-day. The imma- 
nence of God in the cosmos and in man does 
not make miracle an impossibility. There may 
be more than one version of the active will of 
the Most High. It leaves miracle in the cate- 
gory of the logically possible, where it is left 
by the scientific conception of law. But just 
as the scientific conception of law tends more 
and more to reduce miracle to a bare logical 
possibility, so the religious conception of the 
immanence of God in his universe tends more 
and more to make miracle superfluous. Since 
God is in every mode of action in the cosmos 
and in man ; since even now he is closer than 
breathing, nearer than hands or feet; since 



202 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

his intelligent will is the ground of the cosmos 
and all its phases; since his conscience is in 
the conscience of man, what room is there 
for miracle, or what need? Miracle is the 
natural sequence of the transcendental con- 
ception of God. The transcendent God makes 
the cosmos and man, fits them up with 
power so that they run of themselves ; he is 
not in them, he is a God living beyond them. 
They have no immediate value for the soul 
that would find God, they have only a repre- 
sentative value, and as they are degenerate, 
that representative value is sadly impaired. If 
God is to be known at first-hand, according 
to this idea, it must be through miracle. Thus 
Jesus must come into the world in a miraculous 
way ; thus his career as teacher, doer, and 
sufferer must be embedded in miracle. The 
natural order in the cosmos and in man is an 
order devoid of God; the return of God and 
his immediate presentation to man is not and 
cannot be without miracle. In a word, this I 
understand to be the philosophy that makes 
miracle a necessity of faith. Now that the 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 203 

philosophy is no longer recognized as true, 
the inference as to the need of miracle is no 
longer seen to be valid. 

I have conducted my discussion in accom- 
modation to the fears of many good men whom 
I deeply respect. I have been concerned to 
show that the Christian religion is essentially 
independent of miracle. In this attempt I 
have taken the ground assigned by the 
thinkers who do not believe in miracle. So 
far as need be, I have indicated my own posi- 
tion. While I hold the scientific conception 
of law and the religious conception of the 
immanence of God in his universe, I do not 
admit that these ideas render miracle an im- 
possibility. They leave it in the category of 
the logically possible, with the further impres- 
sion that it is naturally and religiously im- 
probable. I am still further free to confess 
that miracle is no part of my working philoso- 
phy of life, not because I deny its reality, but 
because I cannot be sure of its reality, and 
I wish to live as far as possible among the 
things that are sure, and among the things 



204 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

about which sureness is a reasonable hope. 
That I may see for myself, that I may help 
others to see, that religion is independent 
of miracle, I accept in a provisional way the 
denial of miracle as the basis of debate. Mir- 
acle is myth ; so it is said by a multitude 
of scholars and thinkers; and we allow this 
contention to stand. These thinkers assert 
that natural law rules over all ; and we accept 
the assertion as true. On this ground it has 
been shown that mechanism is the vehicle 
of Spirit ; the world as natural law carries 
within it the Eternal God. The flying wheels 
of being have their motion and life in him ; it 
is still true that he makes the outgoings of 
the morning and the evening to rejoice ; it 
is still true that seed-time and harvest, sum- 
mer and winter, are from him. The order of 
life and death is the expression of his Will ; 
unalterable as that order is, it cannot keep 
God from the soul, or the soul from God. 
Within the iron circle of natural law it is pos- 
sible to-day, as it was three thousand years 
ago, to sing : — 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 205 

The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. 

He rnaketh me to lie down in green pastures : 

He leadeth me beside the still waters. 

He restoreth my soul : 

He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for 

his name's sake. 
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 

shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me : 
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 

This is the triumphant insight of the reli- 
gious soul. The parable is the natural life of 
the sheep and the shepherd. The spiritual 
experience behind the parable is man in the 
natural order of the world guided, tended, 
comforted, and kept by the Eternal lover and 
possessor of man's soul. In this parable of 
the possibilities of the soul under the natural 
order, alive and aflame with God as it is, the 
whole higher spirit of the Old Testament sur- 
vives as an abiding and precious possession. 

If it be doubted whether this can be true 
of the New Testament, let those who doubt 
stand again under the cross. Let them look 



206 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

upon the Supreme sufferer, oblivious of his 
own agony, going forth to the penitent thief 
in the great assurance : " Verily I say unto 
thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Para- 
dise." Let them look again and behold him 
going forth in the fullness of pity to the bru- 
tal men who nail him to the cross : " Father, 
forgive them ; for they know not what they 
do." Let them look still again, and this time 
let them watch his spirit, still regardless of 
its own woe, entering the heart of his suf- 
fering mother, whom he thus intrusts to the 
care of the disciple whom he loved : " Woman, 
behold, thy son ! Son, behold, thy mother ! " 
Let them listen with bowed head and in pro- 
foundest awe to the final words : " It is 
finished." " Father, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit." Here is the process of natural 
law at its blackest ; here is the reign of mech- 
anism as a reign of terror ; and yet, in all 
history, is there any disclosure of the Eternal 
love and pity so clear, so dear, so great as 
this? 

When the night of death is past; when the 



THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND MIRACLE 207 

true light of Christian discipleship is once 
more shining ; when the scattered and appalled 
apostles are recalled and reassured ; when in 
their lives the promise is fulfilled, " I will not 
leave you comfortless, I will come to you"; 
when in the depth and wonder of their ex- 
perience and in the might of their service the 
words unfold their truth: "Lo, I am with 
you alway, even to the end of the world," 
we see again through the natural order the 
sovereign soul of the risen Lord. In life and 
in death the Lord is with us ; in life and in 
death we are the Lord's, and the gospel 
that we still preach is the old eternal gospel, 
Immanuel, God in the world and the world 



in 



God. 



CHAPTER V 

AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 



/~\UR age has been concerned to an amaz- 
^-^ ing extent with the local and temporal 
side of religion. Religion is an historic phe- 
nomenon ; as such it has expressed itself in 
institutions, rites, beliefs, literature. This ex- 
pression of religion may be called its tempo- 
ral side ; its institutions belong among the 
social forms of human life, its rites are a part 
of the general custom of the world, its beliefs 
are a phase of the philosophy of existence and 
the universe, its books have their place in the 
literature of the race. To this temporal aspect 
of religious faith probably more scientific at- 
tention has been devoted during the last fifty 
years than in any similar period in the history 
of mankind. The scientific scholar has ap- 
peared, and his special concern has been with 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 209 

the literature of religion, its texts, documents, 
compositions, and with the history of these 
and the ideas embodied in them. The method 
of this investigation has been that common to 
all men of modern education, first-hand ascer- 
tainment of fact, and inference in accord with 
the fact. The presupposition underlying the 
scholar's work and giving general character 
to it has been a naturalistic conception of the 
cosmos. 

What, now, is the justification for the sub- 
jection of the temporal side of religion to this 
new and searching examination ? In reply it 
may be said that there are two justifications, 
one scientific, and the other religious. The 
scientific desire to know the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, is of itself 
a sufficient reason for the investigation. The 
scholar's work is here seen to be part of the 
scientific activity of the world ; it has behind 
it the impulse of all true science, love of truth 
and the quenchless desire to know it. Whether 
that truth shall be favorable to human interests 
or not, does not here enter into the question. 



210 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

What are the facts, and what do they mean 
in the historic process? For the scientific in- 
tellect these are the main questions, and in 
the attempt to meet them an amazing world 
of activity has been called into being. 

In addition to this scientific consideration 
there is another. There is the religious belief 
that things eternal are seen through things 
temporal, that space and time in all their rich 
variety, color, and movement are servants of 
the Highest. This belief leads to the expec- 
tation that a correct version of the temporal, 
in respect to any religion, would prepare the 
way for a new and a more influential concep- 
tion of the Eternal. Here is a new fountain 
of enthusiasm for the devout scholar. In his 
textual criticism, his analysis and rearrange- 
ment of documents, his assignment of books 
to their proper place in the process of human 
development, he is preparing the way for a 
closer vision of the coming of the kingdom 
of God. It is the hope of serving this ulti- 
mate end that turns the detail and drudgery 
of his work into poetry ; that end shines 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 211 

through the entire world in which he works, 
— a world of confusion, sorrow, and contra- 
diction, — and that, like the sun, fills it with 
splendor and life. 

While all this is true, it must be added 
that little has been done in our age toward 
the profounder vision of the Eternal in reli- 
gion. It is humiliating that here we can do 
no more than prepare the way of the Lord ; 
that we are fit for criticism, but not for in- 
sight, able to consider in scientific order what 
others have created, but unable to bring forth 
ourselves ; that we are greater than the men 
of old in research, but immeasurably beneath 
them in the richness and reality of religion. 
The role of the prophet in the cleft of the 
rock, witnessing, so far as mortal man may, 
the pageant of the Eternal goodness, is not 
for us ; we are content to investigate the tra- 
dition of this high experience, to call atten- 
tion to the cleft in the rock and the rubbish- 
heap at either end. Religion as a life and as 
a literature has its greatest exemplars and 
masterpieces in the past ; to-day the soul is 



212 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

not alive as it has been, and too often the 
creative spirit is lost in a world of confused 
detail. 

It must not be forgotten that in great re- 
ligions the human spirit is creative in all the 
spheres of life, in thought, in feeling, and in 
character. Religion is primarily an affair of 
being, exalted and greatened being, with the 
pulse of creative power beating at its heart. 
As in some great mountain one notes a unique 
relation to the infinite sky and a capacity out 
of that sky to renew its splendor, so in a 
soul sublime in its religious consciousness we 
observe a sovereign sense of the Eternal and 
an unmeasured capacity to re-create life, on a 
nobler plan and on a vaster scale, from the 
Eternal. " There is a spirit in man, and the 
breath of the Almighty giveth them under- 
standing." Man's nature as a religious being 
would seem to be a system of capacities in 
the favoring presence of the Eternal ; capa- 
cities for mistake, suffering, entanglement in 
the tragedy of time ; capacities for escape, 
reconciliation with the moral ideal, achieve- 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 213 

ment, growth, and hope ; and religion at its 
best is the victorious consciousness of this 
order of capacities in man as man lives in 
God. It is this great soul of religion that is 
in danger to-day, the movement of the spirit 
of man in the Eternal, the movement of the 
Eternal in the spirit of man. 

Much in the custom of religion tends to 
deaden men to its essential spirit. The monu- 
mental expressions of religion in other ages 
become substitutes for present vision, passion, 
and character ; the Bible that should edu- 
cate, inspire, set free in original relations to 
God absolves the soul from experimentation, 
insight, and discovery. We repeat the prayers 
of the saints, but we do not covet their crea- 
tive heart; we adopt liturgies because they 
lessen the burden of the ministers of the gos- 
pel, and we fail to see that in so doing we 
rob them of their highest privilege. How 
the world looks from the mountain-tops of 
genuine, ardent prayer, they know who have 
been there; we encourage our preachers to 
dispense with this toil and the supreme ex- 



214 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

perience to which it leads, and to adopt and 
repeat the reports of other men's experience. 
We build creeds to aid faith, and thereby deny 
to faith the infinite and intellectual freedom 
and hope there. We enrich our service with 
ritual and ceremony till in the pomp and cir- 
cumstance of worship the God who is spirit 
and truth is forgotten. We lament the loss of 
belief in angels and seek to revive the doctrine 
of familiar spirits ; we speak of the pathos of 
these vanished worlds of faith, and do not per- 
ceive the gain to man and the grandeur of this 
abolition of all intermediaries. To-day man 
leans upon the Eternal strength; to-day he 
stands face to face with God, and this issue to 
which the Holy One is leading us we confuse 
with the custom of religion in our poor hands. 
Even the legitimate and essential labors of 
the scholar are apt to become an impediment. 
His vocation is research into fact, and while 
it is true that every fact has its ideal side, 
like the eagle's egg in the nest, only awaiting 
the brooding intellect to become a living 
thought, yet the vocation of the scholar in 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 215 

our time, especially in the sphere of religion, 
is not quick to kindle the brooding mind. 
Learning and insight should go together, but 
they frequently part company. Never in the 
history of religion has this separation been 
more painfully frequent than now. The ways 
of the Spirit of God with the spirit of man 
are not in the vision of many who yet write 
learned books whose whole value depends on 
the previous question. The earth and the 
soul have their orbits ; poor is the geologist 
who forgets the wide and wild path on which 
his planet runs, and poor is the scholar who 
becomes oblivious of man's inherent and inces- 
sant relation to the Eternal. The frivolous 
custom of religion is aided by the scholar as 
he falls a victim to detail, as he fails to con- 
ceive history in terms of the ideal that strug- 
gles within it, a living but imprisoned force, 
as he forgets to think of religion in time sub 
specie aeternitatis. 

It has been said that modern religion is 
an imitation and an echo. In science, in lit- 
erature, in music, in political and industrial 



216 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

organization the modern man of the West 
is original ; in religion he is not original. I 
think the modern man is superficial and imita- 
tive here because his faith has become formal 
and trivial. The work of the scholar in the 
history of religion should be of the greatest 
consequence ; we have seen why it so often 
falls below its possibility. The formal and 
closed nature of religion, as we conceive it, is 
another aspect of the same distress. The mod- 
ern man is not doing himself justice in this 
supreme sphere. He is here a poor tradition- 
alist, a pale Protestant, a literal Christian 
minus the central idea of the Christian faith, 
the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The adoption 
into intellect and life of the doctrine of the 
Holy Spirit would bring back into faith cre- 
ative power, and the modern mind, free and 
great in so many spheres of human interest, 
would appear in the sphere of religion in an- 
swering greatness. 

An immense amount of good work is done 
by all branches of the Christian church. Edu- 
cation, public service, works of mercy, all the 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 217 

higher interests of the nation, have in the 
Christian churches their best friends. The 
strongest defenders of humanity and the 
mightiest foes of inhumanity are in these 
churches. Practical idealism burns there with 
a steady and powerful light; Christian vi- 
sions for society and Christian pity and hope 
abound. Yet it must be said that these pre- 
cious things are confined to the few. The 
effective force in the churches is still a Gid- 
eon's army, a resolute but meagre remnant of 
the total enrolled membership. The cry for 
a revival of religion is natural ; but the reli- 
gion to be revived is not the right kind, nor 
is the revival sought of sufficient depth. The 
pervasion of man's whole being by the Eternal 
is what we need ; minds renewed in the image 
of the Perfect mind, hearts under the perpet- 
ual spell of the things that are excellent, wills 
steady, and sure in the service of the Chris- 
tian end of existence, God's kingdom and 
righteousness ; these are our needs. The pop- 
ular mind is debased by the evil custom of 
the world; the popular heart is wanting in 



218 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

reverence, and in the morality that reverence 
alone can create and sustain ; the popular will 
is without character ; society as it lies open 
before us cries out for a revival of religion, 
but the religion needed is not the form of 
sound words, or the pious devices and subter- 
fuges of professional revivalism, but man's 
soul made alive in the enduring sense of the 
living and Eternal God. For this end profes- 
sional revivalism with its organizations, its 
staff of reporters who make the figures suit 
the hopes of good men, the system of adver- 
tisements, and the exclusion or suppression 
of all sound critical comment, the appeals to 
emotion and the use of means which have no 
visible connection with grace, and cannot by 
any possibility lead to glory, is utterly inade- 
quate. The world awaits the vision, the pas- 
sion, the simplicity, and the stern truthfulness 
of the Hebrew prophet ; it awaits the imperial 
breadth and moral energy of the Christian 
apostle to the nations ; it awaits the teacher 
who, like Christ, shall carry his doctrine in 
a great mind and in a great character. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 219 

I have spoken of the few elect souls, men 
and women, in our churches who are worthy 
to stand among the best of the Christian 
ages. What about the mass of church people ? 
Are they not as fond of the polluted book, 
the play with its appeal to sensual passion, as 
their pagan neighbors ? Who hears of their ' 
refusing to buy a cheap and repulsive sheet 
that costs a penny, that they may give sup- 
port to a great but two-penny paper? Who 
ever heard them object to the poor dancing- 
girl on the stage, dancing her soul away 
to please low tastes? Who can report any 
revolt on their part over the shame of the city 
and the tradition of infamy that carries on its 
black tide thousands of youths to the pit? 
Do they not know every cheap and question- 
able book, every slimy play, every audacious 
device of the person who caters for pagans, 
every social function far removed from sanc- 
tity, every avenue of exclusiveness and pride, 
every black art of gossip, every twist and turn 
of the ropes of inhumanity, and do they not 
attend church and look for the coming of the 



220 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

kingdom of God ? What kind of revival will 
meet this case ? Hysteria will not do, nor the 
devoutness of Lent, nor a turn at psychic 
healing, whether as patient or patron. What 
is demanded here is the axe laid at the root 
of the tree ; the new heaven and the new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness; the 
renunciation of the devil and all his works, 
and the profound and sincere appeal to the 
Eternal God. 

There are the professional architects of 
unity, and what a sad battalion they are ! 
They seek to unify, in this sect or that, all 
the rival sects ; they devise, cloud the issue, 
and sugar-coat the pill, hoping by diplomacy to 
make sure the coming of the kingdom of love. 
The unity that each sect seeks is the unity of 
the lamb inside the lion ; and this is not the 
most pitiable aspect of the subject. The bases 
of unity are the supreme disgrace. They are 
the acknowledgment of this or that ancient 
creed which has become, in part at least, 
questionable, perhaps incredible ; the accept- 
ance of this or that ecclesiastical usage which 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 221 

any congregation of rogues might agree to j 
submission to some external authority, papal 
or episcopal, and the meek reception at their 
poor hands of one's birthright as a free child 
of God. Religion, the only thing worth 
uniting for, religion, a man's share, his grow- 
ing share in the life of the Eternal, is seldom 
alluded to ; it is taken for granted, much in 
the same way as a bankrupt person might 
assume that he was a millionaire. Never since 
God's world of men began to run have ec- 
clesiastics gathered men into unity ; what they 
have done has been to make the spiritual 
prison larger and pack it with a greater multi- 
tude. Never till the day of doom will true 
unity come except by the prophet of the 
Eternal beseeching all disciples of Jesus to 
retreat from their untenable assumptions, their 
foolish presumptions, their snobbery and 
quackery, their worldliness and inhumanity, 
back upon the life of God. Never till religion 
shall become profound and mighty, never till 
it shall become our chief joy, shall we unite 
in larger and larger groups ; never while 



222 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

eccentricity is our chief gospel, pretense our 
chief delight, and worldliness our main pur- 
suit, shall we be unified on any other ground 
than falsehood, or with any other sect than 
that of fools. 

In the presence of infinitely deeper con- 
cerns, how slight appears to be our concern 
with miracle. When our anxiety is about the 
interior life and majesty of religion, we shall 
not trouble ourselves over the record of signs 
and wonders in which history discovers it. 
The enchantments of sense are not to be com- 
pared with the achievements of the soul of 
man as it lives in God. Outward things are 
shallow, one and all, till they become inward 
things; thought alone discovers depth and 
permanence. Science itself is shallow till it 
gives us, as in physics, a transformed cosmos, 
— a cosmos taken from the senses and given 
back, a less garish but an infinitely greater 
wonder, through the understanding. The re- 
ligion of miracle, it must be confessed, is out- 
ward and shallow ; religion becomes great 
only as it becomes an affair of the soul, con- 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 223 

ceived and brought forth in the strength of 
the Eternal. The central debates, difficulties, 
interests, and hopes of religion are elsewhere 
than in miracle, and to a few of the more 
important of these I must now call attention 
in order and explicitness. 

ii 

The teacher of religion has on hand a real 
and not a mere academic contest. He is called 
not to undertake the defense of any historic 
system of theology such as that of Augustine, 
Calvin, or Edwards ; nor is it the preacher's 
business to protest against the attested results 
of modern Biblical scholarship ; nor is it his 
vocation to fight science on its own ground 
and in the service of its legitimate ends ; nor 
to give an unwarrantable significance to the 
debate over miracle ; it is his far greater task 
to meet current philosophic denials of his gos- 
pel, to do battle against the tremendous vital 
contradictions of his message, to deal with the 
fanaticism that turns sanity in faith out of 
doors, and to take into account the woes that 



224 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

afflict organized Christianity to-day. Here are 
living foes, all the more formidable because 
sincere and sustained by reputable and sin- 
cere men. A rapid glance at the sad heart of 
our time, in its philosophic, vital, fanatical, 
and ecclesiastical contradictions of an eternal 
gospel, is now in order. 

To-day the battle is raging round three 
distinct and opposite views of our human 
world. These views come mailed and pan- 
oplied in august philosophic idiom and tech- 
nique ; they are known as Pure Phenome- 
nalism, Abstract or Transcendental Idealism, 
and Concrete Idealism, formidable names that 
cover ideas that are simple and easy of ap- 
prehension when translated into common 
language. 

The first view, that of Pure Phenomenalism, 
regards our human world as a vagrant ; it 
wanders lonely as a cloud with hardly a patch 
of light upon its back or a sunbeam thrust 
against its poor old ribs ; it is detached, iso- 
lated, a dream, a delusion. The old empiri- 
cism issued in this conclusion inevitably, the 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 225 

empiricism of Spencer, the Mills, Bentham, 
and the great perf ecter o£ the old empiricism, 
David Hume. The new empirical idealism, an 
idealism of sentiment and imagination such as 
that set forth with so much charm of manner 
by Professor George Santayana, 1 arrives at 
the same goal. While built upon the crudest 
materialistic foundation, this philosophy of 
the literary man absolves our human world 
from all connection with permanence. That 
world exists for men ; and beyond men it has 
no meaning. Science, Art, and Religion are 
but the several phases of man's life ; infinite 
mystery is beneath and above and round about 
our world ; what it is for that Infinite, while 
logically beyond all computation, practically 
amounts to nothing. Here is a form of ideal- 
ism that, while it labors in its own sentimental 
way to keep and to enjoy the world of human 
values, yet frankly confesses, now with pathos 
and again with disdain, that the world of man 
is fugitive and worthless. This form of ideal- 
ism has not thus far been expressed with 

1 In his interesting book, The Life of Reason. 



226 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

strength and thoroughness enough to make it 
formidable ; but as it stands in current litera- 
ture, it leads toward serious issues. It takes 
no uncommon insight to see how strong this 
foe of the worth of man's world might be- 
come. It involves belief in the primacy and 
the sovereignty of the material basis of exist- 
ence ; and of course belief in the incidental 
and evanescent character of the world of 
mind. It is a form of thought at variance 
with faith in the dignity of man and the pre- 
sence in man of the Universal spirit. It is 
alien to the Christian philosophy of existence ; 
all the more must it be watched because it 
recognizes sincerely an ideal humanity in the 
heart of the cosmos whose worth for the uni- 
verse is nevertheless nothing. It is the pret- 
tiest, daintiest, and in its implications the 
deadliest, current form of materialism. 

The second view, that of abstract and 
transcendental Idealism, has its strongest ex- 
pression in Bradley's great book, " Appear- 
ance and Reality." This book is, however, 
only one of many attempts to find the uni- 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 227 

verse through man ; attempts which find no 
consistent or permanent meaning in man's 
world. Here Bradley is but a nineteenth cen- 
tury Spinoza ; his book is a new version of an 
old philosophic tradition. We have nothing 
here to do with the process by which he and 
his followers attain their goal ; we take the 
result to which they come, and we protest 
against it in the name of our human world. 
When we hear that world described as an 
appearance of some grand abysmal reality, a 
messenger from some inaccessible, inscrutable, 
eternal sphinx, a bubble blown by something, 
no one knows what, floating in the path of 
time, gay, gorgeous, yet doomed to swift col- 
lapse, and when the collapse comes, leaving 
no trace of itself and its values anywhere, we 
protest. Our human world is our surest, as it 
is our most precious, possession ; and we can- 
not consent to the legitimacy of the process 
by which it is sublimated out of being into 
a form of existence that remains, and must 
forever remain to the unsophisticated intellect, 
a blank. Against the pure phenomenon and 



228 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

the transcendental reality, against the world 
as a vagrant and the Absolute as a man-eater, 
genuine religion must always protest ; and in 
these two current philosophic traditions, the 
Christian religion as the religion of the infi- 
nite worth of human beings must recognize 
the contradiction of its essential gospel. Nat- 
uralism is no foe to Christianity unless it is 
naturalism minus the presence of an ideal. 
The life of Christianity is in the ideal, and 
the realization of the ideal may well be exclu- 
sively in and through the natural order. Ideal- 
ism is the friend of Christianity unless it 
becomes idealism minus the essential worth 
of man. Humanism is the profound friend of 
the gospel of Jesus unless it denies itself, cuts 
itself off from the Infinite, and sees the world 
of man as an unattached and incidental phe- 
nomenon in the heart of a cosmos inferior to 
itself. 

The current movements in philosophy meet 
in one sad confession, the loss of faith in the 
permanent worth of man's world. Naturalism 
when it excludes the ideal and when it makes 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 229 

the ideal dependent upon the process of 
nature ; idealism when it seeks reality beyond 
the order of human existence; humanism when 
it fails to see any organic relation between man 
and the Eternal, chant the same dirge as to- 
gether they dig the grave of all human things. 
The profoundest loss is here. Any number of 
writers and thinkers are sure in the vision and 
swift in the service of the higher humanities 
as such ; but when it comes to the universal 
and permanent significance of these higher 
humanities, these prophets fail. For them 
humanity at its best is an alien in the universe ; 
it has somehow forced its way into this show 
of time; but it lives by the consent of its 
brute inferiors, and beyond its dependent 
existence there is nowhere any Supreme soul 
to whom its excellence might make a prevail- 
ing appeal, and who might save it with an 
everlasting salvation. 

In the presence of this denial the ques- 
tion of miracle is childish. Such a question is 
at best on the circumference of the circle of 
faith; the question of the permanent worth of 



230 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

man is the centre of that circle. It is at this 
centre that the voice of the prophet should 
be heard to-day. In the perspective of diffi- 
culty he should stand here. The armies of the 
alien are massed at this point ; they know the 
citadel of Christian faith, even if preachers 
of the Christian gospel do not know it. The 
universal loss of faith in the Infinite worth, 
the worth of God, of man and man's world, 
would mean the extinction of the essential 
soul of the gospel of Christ. With this con- 
viction as to the perspective of the values of 
faith, it is only right that one should recall 
Christian men from the interests that are 
secondary to those that are deep as life. Fid- 
dling while Rome is burning is an edifying 
occupation to none save to those who wish to 
see the Eternal City in ashes. 

When we leave these interests of the intel- 
lect and enter the domain of the practical, the 
chief concerns take us into another and a far 
profounder world than that of miracle. There 
is the horror of moral defeat facing individuals 
and nations as a constant possibility, in many 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 231 

cases as a fact. Here the moral life of man, 
the moral life in civilized communities, is at 
stake. Individuals are every day breaking 
down under the burden of sensual oppressions. 
Our morality seems to be so widely a question 
of etiquette and diplomacy ; we appear to be 
on the borders of a vast inundation of vice. 
Moral despair is creeping into the heart of 
the few brave idealists; they are asking if it 
is worth their while to resist the devil at their 
gate when the other gates of the city are not 
only open, but festooned with welcome to his 
Satanic majesty. The daily press gives the 
obituaries of the natural man ; the death of 
the soul, of multitudes of souls, is not listed. 
The idle talk about orthodoxies and hetero- 
doxies becomes a mean blasphemy in the pre- 
sence of this death of the ideal, this surrender 
to the brute that is daily going on among 
living and suffering men. 

When we look out upon the business world, 
we see again the world of Ishmael. The hand 
of man is against man ; in capital we have the 
conscienceless corporation atoning for its out- 



232 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

rages upon humanity by its gifts to education 
and religion ; in labor we see brute fury 
violating law, denying the freedom of work- 
men, organizing a tyranny more terrible than 
modern society has ever known, excusing 
itself on the ground that there is no other 
way to gain its rights and to contribute to 
the well-being of the people. Where in this 
dismal outlook is there any sign of brother- 
hood, any hint of victorious moral life ? While 
one's sympathies must go with labor, because 
of its nameless sufferings in the past, and be- 
cause of its hard lot under any possible com- 
bination of circumstances ; while one must 
look with concern upon the associated wealth 
of the land because it is so often pitiless as it 
runs the vast treadmill in which human beings 
pass their sorrowful years, yet the inclusive 
outlook leaves the impression that between 
associated capital and associated labor there 
is little to choose. The old economy rules in 
both camps; the separation of morality and 
business, though the devil himself could not 
make it complete, is still tragically widespread. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 233 

The chief concern of the business world as 
one looks at it truly, both in its association of 
capital and of labor, is not character, is not 
human worth, is not the kingdom of love, but 
money. Here is an approximation to the brute 
struggle for existence of appalling magnitude ; 
here is practical materialism on a scale and 
with a passionate intensity that in comparison 
turns the philosophic article into moonshine. 
The leading nations of the earth in no way 
relieve the gloom of this outlook; they add to 
it a darkness all their own. Here are Christian 
Britain and Christian Germany in deadly feud, 
each intrinsically afraid of the other, yet each 
waiting for a chance to spring at the throat 
of the other. For what cause ? Because Brit- 
ain has the sovereignty of the sea and fears 
she may lose it, because Germany wants that 
sovereignty and hopes some day to win it. 
The whole feud is an economic feud ; it has its 
source in the brute life of both nations ; it is 
the most ruthless exposure of the hollowness 
of the moral life among both peoples. No single 
human goal, no distinctly human interest, no 



234 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

conceivable end of morality or religion, justi- 
fies this irrational and savage hostility. 

But the vision must be extended so as to 
include the sin, the ignorance, the capacity 
to believe a lie, the incapacity to profit by ex- 
perience, in short, the moral tragedy of man- 
kind. The vision of sin and death still rises 
out of the world's heart ; and the preacher of 
religion who averts his sight from this woe for 
the sake of some idle debate of a purely aca- 
demic nature would seem sadly mistaken in his 
conception of man's supreme need and God's 
answer in Christ to that need. 

Mention must next be made of another 
subtle foe of sound religion, the new belief 
in religion as magic, as a therapeutic agent of 
miraculous power. This new cult assumes many 
forms. In one form it calls upon us to deny 
the existence of evil, to ignore disease and 
pain, to believe that thought has the power of 
absolution. Here, of course, there is no regard 
for the fixed conditions of mortal life, no sense 
of the determinations of the Eternal thought 
in which men are held, no concern for facts, 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 235 

no sense of law, nothing but the riot of fancy, 
the play of childish self-will, the lunacy of ir- 
rational ecstasy. Religion as a value in itself 
is here lost. It is a means to an end ; it exists 
chiefly as the servant of the body ; it is good 
because it issues in freedom .from disease and 
pain, because it imparts comfort and efficiency 
to the physical organism. Doubtless these ends 
are good, but they do not rise into the sphere 
of true religion. Hitherto the chief business 
of religion has been with the character, the 
state of the heart, the soul; and in the great 
days of religion, men living in its power have 
been concerned mainly with the moral and 
spiritual conditions of the community. When 
religion and rationality part company, religion 
sinks to an agent in the service of the physi- 
cal organism. A generation of this way of 
regarding religion would go far to reduce it 
to an incidental place among the interests of 
normal human beings. 

The healing cult that is annexing itself to 
the office of the preacher has its peril here. 
Its evil tendency is evident in two ways : it 



236 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

looks at human beings from the wrong side, 
and it turns the commonplaces of psychic power 
over the body into magic. The human person 
should continue to be, at least for the preacher 
of Christianity, essentially a spiritual being, 
one whose most serious concerns are those of 
character. The claims put forward in behalf 
of psychic healing are in favor of an inferior 
interest, and they are in general wild exagger- 
ations. When one sees whole bodies of appar- 
ently sensible human beings carried away by 
the Christian Science craze or the psychic heal- 
ing infatuation, one wonders if religion and 
soul, religion and sanity, religion and the sov- 
ereignty of moral ends, have forever parted 
company. 

The philosophy underlying these crude and 
sad movements may seem at first glance to be 
the sovereignty of spirit. A longer and deeper 
gaze forbids this complimentary conclusion. 
For what is spirit ? Is it not moral will, true 
thought done into life through will ? Is not 
spirit defined by its ends ? Is not its deepest 
trait worth ? Mere immateriality is not a sufli- 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 237 

cient account of spirit ; God as a spirit is not 
properly described as an incorporeal being, but 
as Infinite love. Now in the two forms of magic 
to which I have referred, the life of the body is 
the main interest. The soul has its chief value 
as the servant of the body ; the worth of the 
higher life is the comfort it can bestow on the 
lower. And here one wonders whether, if this 
had been primitive Christianity, there would 
have been a cross at its heart, whether the 
Divine youth with whom it originated would 
have thrown his life away, whether his chief 
apostle would have carried the Christian mes- 
sage through an empire in spite of his thorn 
in the flesh, whether Christianity would have 
bred men and women who counted not their 
temporal life dear to them, that they might 
do the will of God ? So far as there is any 
philosophy underlying these pathetic move- 
ments, it would seem to be the sovereignty of 
the body and the subordination of the soul. 

The deepest aspect of these frantic uses of 
religion is the malady they reveal ; they are 
a symptom of unbelief in spirit. Essential 



238 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

materialism and incidental spiritual existence 
would seem to express their inner meaning. 
And it is here that they become signs of the 
times. Materialism is dead as a theory of the 
universe, because there is for science no such 
thing as matter according to the older concep- 
tion of it. But materialism as a condition of 
human life is universally recognized ; physio- 
logical science has made this condition clear 
and impressive ; the physical organism, espe- 
cially the brain, has assumed a new importance 
in the lif e of man. So much attention has been 
devoted to the physical side of human exist- 
ence that it has gradually assumed the place of 
chief concern. Materialism, practical and vital, 
is in the air ; old beliefs are falling away in 
consequence ; and spirit itself has become 
dependent and incidental. The old compari- 
son of the soul in its relation to the body as 
the harmony to the harp gave better results. 
Though dependent upon the harp, though 
existence after the harp was destroyed was im- 
possible, yet the harmony while it lasted was 
a value in itself, and testified to a whole world 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 239 

of super-material values. Here we are brought 
face to face with another sign of the times. 
Religion as such seems to have few friends ; 
few have anything to say for the soul as a 
value in itself, and for God as the object, the 
life and joy of the human spirit. 

To these adversaries of faith in an eternal 
gospel, by which I mean good tidings for this 
world and all worlds and good tidings chiefly 
for the ethical person, there must be added 
the warfare of the sects. The Roman Church 
will recognize no other ; religion in the pro- 
found and saving sense is still in the keeping 
of its priesthood ; Christ has but one authen- 
tic representative in this world, and that repre- 
sentative is the head of the Roman Catholic 
Church. Here comes in the Episcopal Church, 
Anglican and American, claiming to be the 
church, chiefly regarding the Roman commun- 
ion as given over to superstition, and emphatic- 
ally setting at naught other organizations of 
Christian men and women. The Methodist ap- 
pears, democratic and zealous as ever, but sadly 
entangled in obsolete ideas and ecclesiastical 



240 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

jobbery ; the Baptist cannot surrender a mere 
form even for the sake of the Eternal Spirit ; 
the Presbyterian and the Congregationalist 
still contend for one phase of the world's 
thought as the whole and the final truth, and 
outlaw one another on this basis. Here is the 
solemn and crying disgrace of the Christian 
faith : its interests are trivial, its spirit is in- 
human ; the methods of its warfare are carnal ; 
its snobbery, bigotry, and barbarism are a sad 
sight. In the presence of this exhibit, is there 
any wonder that the churches should have so 
slight a hold upon the people of the land ? As 
they stand, they have no right to empire ; they 
are not clear and earnest enough in intellect, 
nor are they high enough in character, to de- 
serve empire. It is a calamity when inferior 
persons exercise authority ; and this calamity 
is not reduced when these inferior persons are 
labeled religious. If the churches of America 
would exercise power over the national life, 
they must first rise in intellect and in character ; 
serious, informed intellect and high charac- 
ter are the ultimate sources of power ; and our 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 241 

Christian religion is a Divine tradition, but a 
tradition only till it operates in a clear and 
sound mind and declares its spirit in a great 
character. Only so much Christian truth as 
is lodged in character is quick capital in the 
sphere of moral service. 

Authority and influence are in general very 
different things; authority is mainly in the 
office, in the institution, and in the law of the 
institution, whereas influence is in the man, in 
his intellect and character. It is true that we 
speak of the authority of the specialist, the 
decisive and final word of the man who knows, 
and this usage is not now called in question. 
The point here made is that authority does 
not always imply worth ; it is usually, in the 
sphere of faith, a term of compulsion, a word 
signifying the application of force, a power to 
silence and to drive. The Protestant churches 
have entirely lost whatever of this undesirable 
inheritance they may at one time have pos- 
sessed. Their hope is in influence, intellectual 
and moral ; and nothing can give them this 
influence but great minds and true hearts. Ed- 



242 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ucated and free communities are not to be 
moulded in the highest things by the incom- 
petent intellect, even when warmed by the good 
heart ; nor will they follow the godless and 
heartless thinker who deals with religion ; they 
demand the superior mind and the superior 
human being, and in him alone they confess 
the sovereignty of influence. 

in 

In the final book of the New Testament we 
read of an angel flying in mid-heaven proclaim- 
ing an eternal gospel to them that dwell on 
the earth, and to every nation and tribe and 
tongue and people. That eternal gospel con- 
tained these things : God and the glory that 
is his due as the Infinite excellence ; God's 
judgment in this world ; the worship of God 
as the Lord and Giver of life, and as the most 
worthy Judge Eternal. 

Is there any chance for this angel to fly in 
mid-heaven to-day, and if he may fly, will he 
still have an eternal gospel to declare ? We 
may not be altogether satisfied with his former 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 243 

exposition of his eternal gospel ; we may be- 
lieve that in his first flight he was in too great 
haste to lay open to the heart his announce- 
ment of abiding good tidings; we may hope 
that in his second flight his account of his 
message may be richer and closer to the need 
of our troubled age. There can be no doubt 
that this messenger and his message touch our 
life in its prof oundest need ; there can be no 
question that when he speaks again and speaks 
in the idiom of our time, he must be richer in 
detail and more explicit than he was of old. 

When troubled over the changing aspects 
of our historic Christian faith, it is good to 
strip that faith bare and to look at it in its 
naked majesty. Our whole human world is 
summed up in persons ; souls in the presence 
and life of the Infinite soul ; that is the ulti- 
mate reality of our universe. Our faith is the 
vision of Jesus concerning the meaning of 
this universe, his insight set in the authority 
of his character, and filled with the glory of 
his passion. This is the permanent centre of 
our Christian faith ; this is our Christianity 



244 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

as we shall hold it in the invisible world. In 
that invisible world the Bible, our dearest 
treasure here, will be absent ; there will be no 
church there, no temporal ritual, sect, creed ; 
no sacrament like Baptism and the Lord's 
Supper ; no miracle, no division of life into 
sacred and secular. " The sun shall be no more 
thy light by day ; neither for brightness shall 
the moon give light unto thee : but the Lord 
shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and 
thy God thy glory." 1 The temporal world is 
for a temporal end ; when that end is served, 
that order has done its work ; when the indi- 
vidual ceases to exist in that order, it ceases 
to have further meaning for him. The serious 
question concerns not the temporal order, 
but the Eternal Spirit who meets man in it, 
and who educates man through it ; the pro- 
foundest interest centres not in what is bound 
to pass away, but in that which cannot pass 
away. Our Christian faith, considered sicb spe- 
cie aeternitatix, sums itself up in these great 
simplicities : the object of faith, — God ; the 

1 Isaiah lx, 19. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 245 

monumental teacher of this faith, — Jesus 
Christ ; the fellowship of it, — the souls 
of believers ; the service which it inspires, — 
obedience in any one of countless forms, in 
countless diverse situations, to the Eternal 
good will ; the endless worth of personal being, 
of personal being as love in action, as love in 
possibility. 

It goes without saying that a religion for 
eternity is not necessarily suited, in all re- 
spects, to a being in time. We need elements 
of faith in this temporal order not needed in 
that eternal order. Thus church, creed, ritual, 
sacrament, and the great Bible come back, as 
elements of power and necessity in our pre- 
sent distress. Still the clear sense of the tem- 
poral nature of these elements of our faith 
liberates the spirit from too much depend- 
ence upon them, imparts steadiness amid the 
changes that inevitably go with them, and leads 
to a wise and happy perspective of values. In 
our faith we find two sets of values, the tem- 
poral and the eternal; therefore that cannot be 
of supreme concern which dies with time ; that 



246 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

must be our sovereign interest which lasts 
forever. 

An acute and learned writer has recently 
published a book with this attractive title, 
"The Eternal Values." 1 If this book shall 
keep to the heart the promise that it makes to 
the ear, here surely men will find rest to their 
minds. But just here is our difficulty with this 
elaborate and interesting production. While 
it contains an admirable account of the values 
of perception, logical connection, our fellow- 
world, and the world of art, it brings no 
authentic tidings of eternal values for man. 
There is in the final pages of the book the 
dim emergence of an Absolute for whom our 
human values may have an eternal value, but 
for that Absolute we men as such are of only 
temporal value. 

The author of this book is fond of titles 
that imply the dignity of the higher aspects 
of our human world ; it is a grief to be obliged 
to add that, as he employs them, that dig- 
nity is vain. Eternal ideals, eternal values, 

1 Professor Miiiisterberg. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 247 

what do these fine words mean ? Ideals are the 
visualized expectations, the images that em- 
body desire and hope, the desire and hope of 
persons. These images may be of economic 
good, scientific, artistic, political, philosophic, 
religious; whatever the ends may be which 
these visions represent, their length of days 
is strictly dependent on the length of days of 
the persons, or the race of persons, that en- 
tertain them. An eternal ideal as the vision 
or product of a temporal race is eternal non- 
sense. The same is true of values. Values are 
such to rational beings ; they may be as nu- 
merous as are the interests of man; they may 
be sensuous, conceptual, domestic, national, 
racial, universal ; but whatever their worth may 
be, that worth ceases when the persons or the 
races of persons for whom they have worth 
become extinct. Eternal ideals and eternal 
values as the possession or production of a 
temporal race are manifest impossibilities. It 
is almost needless to say that eternal ideals 
and values belong only to spiritual beings who 
last forever ; and if the Absolute alone lasts 



248 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

forever, he alone is in possession of eternal 
ideals and values. With all due respect to 
this Absolute for whom everything exists that 
does exist, and in whose presence nothing 
that lives is of any account for itself, the chief 
concern of human beings is with human ideals 
and values. To call us to the study of Eternal 
Ideals and Eternal Values and then to tell 
us in our high-raised expectations that these 
ideals and values are not for us, is to give us 
a scorpion for an egg y to keep the promise of 
infinite good to the ear and to break it to the 
mind. If man's world is wholly temporal, let 
it be so described ; if man ceases to be as a 
person at death, again let us hear our sentence 
in plain words. In the presence of fate we 
shall resolve with Nicias and his army, " We 
shall do what men may and bear what men 
must." But on no account let us juggle with 
words ; let us not dream that we discover 
eternal ideals and values for men when the 
race of men is a mere incident in the endless 
evolutions of the cosmos. And if we think 
that men should be willing to be damned for 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 249 

the glory of the Absolute, let us beware lest 
our Absolute, in making this requisition upon 
moral beings, turn out to be not the Infinite 
Perfection, but the Infinite Cannibal, not the 
God and Father whose tender mercies are over 
all his works, but the devil that is the slan- 
derer, the enemy of man. 

An eternal gospel identifies the being of man 
as spirit and the being of God. In such a gos- 
pel we do not have two sets of ideals and two 
sets of values ; we have one order for God and 
man, with this difference, that while this order 
of ideals and values in the case of God is 
immediate and complete, it dawns upon man 
through the atmosphere of the temporal world, 
and lives among its fires and storms. The 
essential kinship of God and man is the heart 
of the Christian faith; without this essential 
and endless kinship, eternal good tidings for 
man there can be none. With this fundamen- 
tal assurance that in virtue of thought, moral 
accountability, and responsible action, there is 
essential identity of being between God and 
man, we have still eternal good tidings to pro- 



250 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

claim to mankind. For then the whole contrast 
of the Infinite to the finite, the Perfect to the 
imperfect, the Universal Spirit to the individ- 
ual human being, is but the contrast of the 
Eternal Father to his child in time ; the contrast 
is all in our interest. Because his thoughts are 
not our thoughts, because his ways are not our 
ways, because as the heavens are higher than 
the earth, so are his thoughts and ways higher 
than ours, therefore we are the more able to be- 
lieve the call, " Let the wicked forsake his way, 
and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and 
let him return unto the Lord, and he will have 
mercy upon him ; and to our God, for he will 
abundantly pardon." ' When we pray, "Our 
Father who art in heaven," we claim kinship 
with the Eternal Spirit, we set that kinship 
in the heart of infinite contrast; yet this con- 
trast is all in our favor. It is of the Lord's 
mercy that we are not consumed ; because his 
compassions fail not; they are new every 
morning and fresh every evening. The iden- 
tity of man with God is supported by an infi- 

1 Isaiah lv, 7. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 251 

nite contrast of wisdom and power and com- 
passion. 

Our human world is our supreme concern; 
life in that world is either a permanent possible 
or a permanent actual value. The quality pos- 
sessed by the finest spirits is a value for all 
moral beings in all worlds. The conceptions in 
which the philosophy of Socrates consisted have 
long ago been transcended; they were tran- 
scended by Plato, his chief disciple, and still 
further by Plato's great disciple; but Socrates 
confronting death with the cup of hemlock in 
his hand, as depicted in the closing chapter of 
the "Phaedo," has never been transcended and 
never will be. The history of his people and the 
philosophy of that history given by Stephen, 
his insight into the genius of the new religion 
and his apology for it, have been transcended; 
but the spirit that went up to God through the 
shower of stones that ended his life — "Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge" — has never 
been transcended, and again, it will never be. 
Fortitude, moral serenity, magnanimity, and 
devotion to the highest, when they appear in a 



252 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

human person, are seen at once to be values 
for all men in all time, and for the universe, 
if it is noble enough to care for such things. 
These values in the highest spirits become 
ideals for the rest; values and ideals alike are 
both human and eternal, if man and God care 
for the best things. 

With this insight into life gained from su- 
preme spirits we note at once that human re- 
lationships are moral to the core. The animal 
ends are to be held in control by ends of jus- 
tice and mercy; the forms in which human 
beings associate, economic, domestic, political, 
scientific, artistic, philosophic, are in their final 
meaning ethical; they have their deepest sig- 
nificance as an organism for the development 
and expression of eternal moral values. 

This brings us to our accountability to God; 
and here we see the ground of a living and 
potent religion, a living and potent humanity. 
Religion lives in the vision of God; man lives 
in the religion that is the vision and service of 
God, the God with whom he is at heart one, 
in whose spirit his spirit is to be cleansed and 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 253 

perfected. The Christian religion is the vision 
of God in Jesus Christ, the vision of man as 
the child of God in the same Teacher ; the rev- 
elation through him that the meaning of exist- 
ence is moral ; that goodness in human beings 
and the possibility of it are values for the uni- 
verse; that the life of our kind follows an 
order of ideals and values identical with that 
followed by the Eternal Spirit, because at heart 
he and we are one. 

IV 

Several times I have said in this discussion 
that our chief difficulties in religion are to be 
solved by prof ounder living in God. Questions 
of scholarship are important and at the same 
time secondary; questions in the philosophy 
of religion go much deeper, yet there is a depth 
below them; for the philosophy of religion 
is the rational account of religion as fact, as 
life and power. In religion itself there is a 
synthesis of the highest powers in man, insight, 
feeling, will ; this synthesis generates a special 
experience, and this special experience is the 



254 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

sovereign thing in the history of the race. To- 
day one meets the denial of the moral ideal ; 
and the question comes, How shall that denial 
be met? It may be met by argument and by 
life, but life alone is the conclusive answer. 
We may point to Socrates, Luther, Lincoln, 
to the great as they have given a new turn to 
human history ; or we may look into the moral 
life of good men in all history. We find men 
living in a system of relationships; out of 
these relationships have come ideals. There is 
no fact better attested in the history of man 
than the presence of the ideal in morally 
awakened human beings. And this ideal is the 
sign of the complete human existence as that 
is understood by each idealist. Whether the 
lower animals form and entertain ideals, we do 
not know; whether there is in them anything 
higher than images of gratified appetite, we 
may not be prepared to say ; but in men, when 
morally awakened, there is the hunger for the 
perfect life in God, the need that expresses 
itself in the old words, a I shall be satisfied 
when I awake in thy likeness. " 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 255 

The moral ideal is admitted, but it is said 
that it is without influence. Biology is not 
amenable to thought; organic processes are 
inevitable, and go their way careless of the 
moral ideal. Hunger, thirst, the reproductive 
instinct, the circulation of the blood, the 
changes in the nerve centres and in the brain, 
in fact, all the main processes of physiology 
and biology, are independent of thought, and 
moral ideals and resolves are powerless in their 
presence. This is the deepest denial in our 
time, the frankest and the most audacious con- 
fession of the sovereignty of the lower in man 
and in the universe over the higher. At the 
same time it is, for the morally unawakened, 
the hardest foe to meet and vanquish. For them 
there is little or none of that great special ex- 
perience to which such a denial is idle chatter. 

This deepest and saddest denial of our time 
must be met by argument, and yet more by 
the witness of experience. Hunger and thirst 
are organic processes ; no man by thought can 
arrest or diminish these desires; but all decent 
human beings control them through civilized 



256 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

thought. The denial is perhaps leveled more 
directly at the sex instinct than at any other 
organic force in human nature. Here let ap- 
peal be taken to chaste youth, and the power 
of thought over biological processes will be- 
come evident. Every morally awakened young 
man who has faced his animal inheritance in 
the strength of his rational possessions, who 
has looked upon his passions growing into a 
group of wild beasts, and who has resolved to 
tame these beasts, can refute the denial in ques- 
tion. He knows that as a man thinketh in his 
heart, so is he; he knows with the Greek Aris- 
totle that desire originates through thought; 1 
that physical discomfort in the organism can- 
not become definite and inflamed desire till 
taken up and shaped by thought; that upon 
the reproductive instinct adverse thought has 
an immediate influence; that this style of 
thought maintained penetrates to the inmost 
processes of the organism and fixes there a 
real and wholesome dominion. And when this 
thought adverse to the sovereignty of the sex 
1 Meta. B. 11, 7. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 257 

instinct expresses itself in games, in a variety 
of intellectual interests, in any one of a large 
number of possible ambitions, economic, artis- 
tic, scientific, philanthropic; above all, when it 
utters itself in definite moral service, it attains 
to a substantial mastery of the soul. Indeed, 
in the presence of the force that oftener runs 
wild than any other in human nature, it should 
be said that no instinct in man is more sus- 
ceptible of transformation and right direction. 
That human beings so often fail here marks 
weakness, but not incapacity for strength; and 
on the other hand, the jubilant moral life of 
youth redeemed through thought brings in 
the overwhelming answer to the pathetic denial 
of ideal power. 

So much is certainly sound in the mental 
healing craze, that right thinking has a decided 
influence upon the functions of the body. 
There is perhaps hardly an organ in the body 
whose condition and operation are not subject 
to the power of the mind ; and till degeneration 
becomes decided, the intelligence is a co-effi- 
cient in the production of health. Even in dis- 



258 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

ease, the mind is capable of abstraction; it is 
able in no small measure to ignore and tran- 
scend the reports and agitations that pour in 
from the distressed physical organism; it is 
strong enough, as in the case of the late Pro- 
fessor Mulf ord, or W. Robertson Smith, ! to 
discuss the sentence of death by an incurable 
disease, then to dismiss it and turn to the old 
paths of thought. 

The denial of the influence of the moral 
ideal over conduct, and still more over the 
currents of the soul, has a pathetic genesis. It 
finds its primary suggestion, perhaps, in the 
study of nervous pathology ; this suggestion is 
forced into the mind of the student by the 
observed influence of the body upon the in- 
telligence ; here is apt to follow the hasty gen- 
eralization that all thought is the mere inci- 
dence of organic processes in the brain, a 
world created by material conditions, shunted 
off by itself for a while, possessing splendors 
and glooms of its own, but always the creature, 
and finally the victim, of brute matter. 

1 J, Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography, p. 325. 






AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 259 

This state of mind is further confirmed, in 
many cases, by the absence of full opportu- 
nity for action. By itself the intellectual life is 
not enough ; it leads astray when left to itself. 
Fichte delivered himself from the dominion 
of physical necessity by the power of thought; 
he delivered himself from the impotence of 
thought by the moral will. Action is the final 
revelation of reality; and lives spent exclu- 
sively in thought inevitably fall into despair 
over its worth. Amiel is optimist and pessimist, 
agnostic, atheist, theist; Catholic, Protestant, 
Buddhist ; in short, he is everything by turns, 
because he is so little at home in the world 
of moral service. When one's inmost thought 
is this : " I must work the works of him that 
sent me while it is day ; the night cometh in 
which no man can work," his thought is put to 
the test, and in the moral test attains to moral 
reality. 

Still further, the pathetic denial of the in- 
fluence of the ideal comes from the confusion 
of the ideal with a mere sentimental dream. 
It is from sentimental writers that we hear 



2G0 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

most about the ideal ; serious ethical writers 
have adopted their fine word, but it must never 
be forgotten that different meanings are at- 
tached to it by the two classes of thinkers. 
For the sentimentalist the ideal is a mental 
picture and no more ; for the ethical thinker 
it is the voice of conscience in the imagina- 
tion. To one man the ideal is only an image, 
beautiful but impotent, like the dream of a 
love-sick youth over the girl who has chosen 
another than himself ; to the other the ideal is 
duty rising in splendor through the atmosphere 
of the imagination. Mere sentiment is surely 
the nearest to impotence of any of the expe- 
riences of mortal men, and for any person who 
tries to meet the stern and tremendous forces 
of the lower life with nothing stronger than 
the weapons of the sentimentalist, there can be 
but one issue. The appeal is, after all, to life. 
Every man has the chance to answer for him- 
self the statement that the ideal is impotent. 
He may meet that statement in the awe and 
joy of a manhood controlled out of the ideal, 
standing in the great process of moral trans- 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 261 

formation, sure of growth, sure of the forces 
that have brought it and that promise more. 
And this personal experience of victory over 
passion in the strength of the ideal he will 
broaden into the great tradition of the supreme 
moral idealists. He will recall Jesus and his 
sovereign idealism ; he will not forget the ideal- 
ism of the Hebrew prophets ; of Paul, Augus- 
tine, and Luther; of the company that no man 
can number, who out of weakness were made 
strong, who came out of the great tribulation, 
and washed their robes and made them white 
in the power of the ideal. He will conclude 
that the denial of religion is never so easy of 
refutation as when it contests the reality of 
the lif e of man in God. 

It is said that religion is a tangle of errors 
and superstitions ; therefore it is for the un- 
educated. This charge must be laid to heart. 
But so far as it is true, the same may be said 
of every human interest. There is no single 
human interest in an ideal condition. Even 
science runs wild, and on the pin-point of ev- 
idence tries to balance the universe of truth. 



262 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Art is beset behind and before with fads and 
superstitions. Philosophy is sane only now and 
then ; and among its devotees wisdom and the 
love of it are often sadly left out of the ac- 
count. Politics as a science and still more as 
an art is in dire confusion ; the domestic life 
of man, his deepest life as a creature of time, 
is in wild disorder. What is to be done ? Are 
we to abandon all the interests of the scholar, 
the scientist, the artist, the man of the world, 
and the man of speculation, because confusion 
reigns everywhere ? By no means ; these inter- 
ests are the life of our human world, and we 
will work together to put them in better order. 
Some day, a thousand years hence, perhaps, 
our effort to improve firings will be represented 
in an approximation to the ideal condition on 
the part of all these interests. 

Precisely so we reason about religion. Truth 
and error are sadly mixed in it; reality and 
unreality, substance and superstition, are too 
often rolled into one mass, and we are invited 
to accept this total as from the Highest. Still 
further, there is often little perspective of val- 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 263 

ues in modern religion. What then? Shall we 
abandon this sovereign human interest to the 
inferior intellect and the incompetent ? By no 
means ; we will struggle together to separate 
the wheat from the chaff, the substance from 
the ugly superstition that clings to it; we will 
strive to bequeath to our children the purer 
and the greater religion, hoping that finally, 
when the temple of God in man is complete, 
our poor endeavor will be represented and 
honored there. 

It is said that man is not made in the im- 
age of God; that God is made in the image 
of man. Here it is true that we make God 
in our image; we can understand God only 
through the forms of human intelligence. But 
this is no reason for the denial that man is 
made in the image of God. Surely man owes 
his being to the universe ; he has been made 
a person, a thinker, and a responsible doer in 
this world ; since nowhere within sight is there 
any pattern according to which his being has 
been shaped, is it unreasonable to infer that 
the archetype of the moral being of man is the 



264 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

moral being of God ? An antecedent man must 
have, an antecedent adequate to account for 
him ; and is there any better hypothesis here 
than the statement of religious faith that the 
highest in this world is made in the image of 
the Highest in the universe? We confess at 
once that we make God in the image of man, 
and we contend that we are able to do this 
because God made man in the image of himself 
as the supreme thinker and doer, the archety- 
pal moral being. 

But here again the answer of thought should 
be supplemented by the answer of life. That 
God is a mere idealization imposed upon the 
universe by man is refuted in the great trial 
of the soul. "I saw the Lord/' said Isaiah ; "I 
have seen God face to face/' said another. 
Moral life is in the strength of the ideal, and 
the ideal leads to him who is the sum of all 
our ideals and infinitely more. In the process 
of moral life the soul meets God as its light 
and salvation ; here it grasps the Infinite other 
of itself ; and when distress is at its deepest, 
its cry is, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 265 

in him." When the cup is the cup of woe and 
death, it is here chosen because it is his will. 
In the great process of the moral life God is 
the immediate and sure possession of the soul. 
The religious man, whose religion has become 
a profound and victorious life, cries, " I know 
how to be abased, and I know how to abound ; 
I can do all things through him that strength- 
ened me." Whether it be Paul that utters that 
cry, or Cromwell weeping over the son dead 
in battle, or any soul anywhere, high or hum- 
ble, the fact is the same. In the utmost life 
of man God stands revealed as man's Deliverer 
and Father. 

The confidence of reason is great ; the con- 
fidence of personal experience in the moral 
process of existence is greater. Our thoughts 
are imperfect ; in the possessions of the heart 
and in the perpetually renewed service of the 
ideal we find our chief peace. There is such 
a thing in the world to-day as the secret of the 
Lord, and it is with them who in awe and love 
wait upon him. Covenants with God are still 
made, and when made in tears and blood, they 



266 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

stand fast. The profounder life in God turns 
either into agents of intellectual discipline or 
things childish, current denials of the realities 
of faith. Religious men are moved by them 
only as shallow seas are by winds; religious 
men are ineffective in meeting these denials 
because their life in God is wanting in depth 
and peace. 



Books on the philosophy of religion multi- 
ply, and many of them are serious contribu- 
tions to thought : still, it must be said of the 
greater number of them that what one misses 
in them is a profound religious consciousness. 
The greater number of these books seem to be 
a philosophy of other men's religion, imper- 
fectly appreciated, and by writers who have 
little or no religion themselves. Aristotle is 
to be admired on many counts; he is to be 
admired especially because, having no religion 
himself, he did not treat of the philosophy of 
religion. This great master of thought con- 
fined himself to those departments of human 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 267 

experience in which he had a profound share. 
He knew well that without the rich and unus- 
ual experience there cannot come into exist- 
ence the mature and adequate philosophy. 
The indictment to be brought against much 
that calls itself a philosophy of religion is that it 
is without first-hand and profound knowledge 
of religion ; that it is mainly an endeavor, and 
it must be added a poor endeavor, to account 
for the religion of other people. 

Before we can advance wisely in this dis- 
cipline, we need a profounder religious con- 
sciousness. Indeed, the religious consciousness 
carries with it its philosophy ; the Eternal is 
its dwelling-place ; it has only to make explicit 
what is already implicit and part of its life. 
In the interest of thought, still more in the 
interest of man, the call must be to a new and 
a deeper life in God, Men must cease to play 
with the moral ideal ; they must boast* about 
it no longer as the high possession of the soul ; 
they must break up the habit of gossip con- 
cerning its subjectivity ; they must translate it 
into duty with the sanction of the Eternal in it. 



268 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

Religion takes its own way in the service of 
the soul. It goes out in a great order of ex- 
perimentation. It takes this current dogma of 
the subjectivity of all our thoughts and it puts 
it to the test of life. There it breaks down ; 
there the objectivity of thought finds its vin- 
dication. In and through the process of moral 
life men find that their best thoughts are valid 
for all moods, for all days and years, and that 
when sincerely adopted they bring a similar 
freedom and peace to all men. The universal 
and the permanent is the true objective; what 
holds good for all men all the time may well 
be held as carrying in it the sanction of God. 
The religious man is driven to this conclusion. 
He takes his best thoughts, lifts them to God ; 
there he sees them filled with God's sanction 
and sent back from him invested with the au- 
thority of his truth. For the believer in God 
there must be an order of God for human life ; 
this order is to be found through the severest 
experimentation; when from this experimen- 
tation the valid thoughts emerge, they stand 
forth as the will of God for man. In one way 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL ! 269 

or another the religious man must escape from 
the circle of mere subjectivity. That circle is 
a circle of death ; it is the spiritual whirlpool 
of serious and thoughtful men to-day. Here, 
as I have said, is one way of escape : the way 
of the spirit is experimentation ; the univer- 
sally and permanently valid for the best life 
of the moral person is the objective; in that 
objective the soul rests in the Divine will. 

The sense of sin must return. To-day it 
lives chiefly in ancient hymns and liturgies. 
The reason of all this lies in the shallowness 
of the moral and religious sense. The moral 
ideal is a sublime picture, and as such it is 
to be admired and talked about; so much the 
devil of mere subjectivity enjoins. The moral 
ideal appears in the wintry atmosphere of lives 
conformed to the evil custom of the world, 
appears there pale and feeble, and a word of 
thankfulness for its relieving glow seems to 
be all that is demanded by the situation. 
When the moral ideal appears as the face and 
eyes of God, reading the secret shame of man's 
heart, sending home the conviction of his mis- 



270 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

taken and perverse ways, revealing the utter 
falsehood and hollowness of his life, bringing 
him into the presence of the Eternal honor 
and keeping him there in moral torture, like 
one of old he will cry, " Woe is me ! for I am 
undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, 
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean 
lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the 
Lord of hosts." l Religion cannot long endure 
when conscience has been dismissed ; the recall 
and reinvestment of conscience is an essential 
condition of the return of profound and true 
religion. Of old, the secret of the Lord was 
with them that feared him ; to-day, it has gone 
with the Pharisee and the impenitent thief. 
It was otherwise in times when religion was 
great : — 

The path of the righteous is as the shining light, 
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 2 

It was otherwise when religion began in a 
great moral revolution : God, be merciful to 
me a sinner; I was not disobedient to the 

1 Isaiah vi, 5. 2 Proverbs iv, 18. 



AN ETERNAL GOSPEL 271 

heavenly vision ; behold, the half of my goods 
I give to the poor, and if I have taken any- 
thing from any man by extortion, I restore 
him fourfold; except your righteousness shall 
exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and 
Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. 

On the basis of the moral ideal as the image 
of the moral will of God for man, in awe and 
tears, religion begins and goes on in the power 
of a new life. Vision, prayer, fellowship, service, 
struggle, and victory are the great notes of 
that new existence. It is this new existence in 
individuals, in churches, in vast bodies of men, 
that is to-day our deepest need. The chemist 
without food dies like his ignorant brother, 
and the philosopher of religion is an even more 
pitiable sight than the multitude for whom 
there is no open vision. The more and more 
adequate account of religion is the work of 
gifted minds in the long succession of the 
ages ; meanwhile we are here to-day and to- 
morrow we are gone. Is there nothing for us on 
our swift race through time, nothing but the 



272 RELIGION AND MIRACLE 

accounts of religion which men give who have 
at best only a pathetic share in its wondrous 
life and power? Is there for us no Eternal God 
in whom to put our whole trust as we stand at 
the task of moral persons, and in the labor 
and sorrow of time? Are the vision, the self- 
abasement, the self -surrender, and the rapture 
of religion forbidden to us, and the service 
that in its might becomes a song? Religious 
men know that it is otherwise ; they have sat 
at the feet of the great; they have entered 
forever the school of Christ as disciples there ; 
they are in the conduct of a solemn personal 
experimentation in the things of the soul ; they 
know that their Redeemer liveth ; their God 
is their glory. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abraham, the migration of, 

74. 
Accountability to God, 252. 
Amiel, 259. 
Amos, a great representative of 

spiritual religion, 95, 96. 
Angel, the, of the eternal gospel, 

242, 243. 
Anthropology, the old, Ivii. 
Antigone and (Edipus, 181. 
Apollos, 71. 
Apostles, the, with Jesus, 148, 

149 ; effect of his resurrection 

on, 150, 151. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 29. 
Arabian Nights, real to children, 

61. 
Argument weakened by bias, 

5, 6. 
Aristodemus, the little atheist, 

109. 
Aristotle, his eternal thinker, 

xxxix ; his two great words, 

lxxi ; 46, 179 ; on nature, 50, 
! 51 ; on parenthood, 137, 138 ; 

to be admired because he did 

not treat of the philosophy of 

religion, 266. 
Arnold, Matthew, " Monica's 

Last Prayer " quoted, 116, 

117; "Rugby Chapel," 

195-200. 
Atonement, doctrine of the, lvii, 

lviii. 
Augustine, St., on the miracu- 



lous, 28, 29 ; " Confessions," 
116, 118, 176. 
Authority and influence, 241. 

Bacon, Francis, a vain boast of, 
xxii, xxiii ; his depreciation 
of Greek thinkers, li. 

Belief, not limited to the verifi- 
able, 71, 72 ; confusion in the 
field of, 187. 

Bellamy, Joseph, wrote nothing 
on miracle, 30 ; chief interest 
of, 30. 

Berkeley, George, theistic argu- 
ment of, 110, 111. 

Bible, the, theory of verbal in- 
spiration of, xxv ; chief value 
of, xxvi, xxvii ; modern study 
of, 58 ; the vision of God in, 
101-108 ; the great debate 
about, 188 ; and the Holy 
Ghost, 191. 

Bradley, Francis Herbert, his 
11 Appearance and Reality,' ' 
226, 227. 

Bryce, James, 258. 

Bushnell, Horace, xlix, 177. 

Business world, the, 231, 232 ; 
money its chief concern, 233. 

Calvin, John, 49, 50, 177. 

Capital and labor, 232. 

Carlyle, Thomas, his life of 
Cromwell, 1 ; on the nature of 
miracles, 12, 13 ; his study of 



276 



INDEX 



the French Revolution, 96 ; 
" The Everlasting Yea," 115. 

Cause and effect, 47, 55, 56. 

Celsus, 28. 

Character, a product and an 
achievement, 124. 

Cheyne, T. K., his method of 
cutting up Isaiah, 72. 

Christian church, good work 
done by, 216, 217 ; the mass 
of its members, 219. 

Christian experience, the great 
defense of the faith, lxviii. 

Christian faith, see Faith. 

Christian religion, the, 7 ; only 
two things absolutely essen- 
tial to, 8 ; like other religions 
in point of miracles, 81 ; see 
also Religion. 

Christian Science, 234, 236. 

Clement of Alexandria, 176. 

Conscience, religion cannot en- 
dure without, 270. 

Consubstantiation, chief objec- 
tion to, 131. 

Cordelia and Lear, 181. 

Cosmic mind, the, 62, 85. 

Creation, 52. 

Creeds, 214. 

Criticism, the present an age of, 
185. 

Disciple of to-day, the, 168, 169 ; 

his hopes, 171. 
Discipleship, the great test of, 

170. 
Divine intellect, the, all things 

not of equal importance to, 

\\i, xxii. 
1 Mvinity school, tho modern, 18S. 
Doubt, discipline in, 1S4. 



u Ecclesiastica Musica," 118. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 137, 138, 

178 ; no discussion of miracle 

in his published writings, 29 ; 

subjects that absorbed him, 

29, 30. 
Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., has no- 
thing to say on miracle, 31. 
Elective system, the grounds 

of, xxii. 
Elijah and the priests of Baal, 

16. 
Elisha, miracle worked by the 

bones of, 16. 
Emmons, Nathaniel, wrote very 

little on miracle, 31, 32. 
Eternal values and eternal 

ideals, 246, 247. 
Existence, the proof of, 144- 

147. 
Exodus, epic of the deliverance 

of Israel, 90. 
Experience, tells us what is, 63, 

65 ; general and special, 66. 
Eye-witness, testimony of, 66. 
Ezekiel, 95. 

Faith, Christian, the true per- 
spective of, xix, xxv ; va- 
rieties of, xxvii, xxviii ; of the 
future, lxv, lxvi ; Christian 
experience the great defense 
of, lxviii ; the world of, di- 
vided into the essential and 
the unessential, lxxvii, lxxviii; 
the sovereign object of, 82 ; 
the present opportunity of, 
185; the way of, 19S-200 ; 
what it is, 248, 244 ; two sets 
of values in, 245 ; the heart 
of, 249. 



INDEX 



277 



Fate, the idea of, 48 ; in poetry, 
49 ; not inductive, 51. 

Fates, the Greek, 48. 

Fichte, J. G., 259 ; his " Voca- 
tion of Man," 115. 

Fourth Gospel, the, 150, 176. 

Freedom of mind, 184, 185. 

Gethsemane, 128, 129. 

Gladstone, W. E., 56. 

God, the Eternal soul, xxix, xxx, 
xxxiv ; the idea of, xli, xlii ; 
and prayer, xlvii ; living in, 
7, 194 ; sense of the fatherly 
love of, 8, 9 ; being and char- 
acter of, the sovereign object 
of faith, 82 ; his existence in- 
dependent of miracle, 83 ; the 
terminus of all things, 84; 
present in the affairs of men 
and nations, 96 ; the vision of, 
in the Bible, 101-108 ; historic 
arguments for belief in, 108- 
114 ; found in three great 
spheres of human existence, 
115; faith in, not dependent 
on miracle, 118 ; grounds of 
belief in, 146, 147 ; natural 
law his speech, 178, 179, 182 ; 
1 the immanence of, 200-202 ; 
kinship of man with, 249, 
250 ; our accountability to, 
252. 

Gospel, appeal of the, lxii ; an 
eternal, 208-272. 

Gospels, the, why written, 150. 

Great Britain and Germany, 
233. 

Gyges, the ring of, 120. 

Harris, Samuel, on miracle, 35. 



Healing cult, the, 234-237, 257. 

Hebrews, Epistle to the, author- 
ship of, 71, 106 ; seldom fully 
appreciated, 104-107. 

History, the two sides of, 74 ; 
but a poor remnant of a van- 
ished world-life, 75. 

Hodge, Charles, definition of 
miracle, 35. 

Holy Ghost, the, and the Bible, 
189, 190; the hope of the 
church, 192 ; the doctrine of, 
216. 

Holy Spirit, demonstration of 
the, lxvi-lxxviii ; importance 
of the doctrine of, xxii. 

Hopkins, Samuel, published no- 
thing on miracle, 31. 

Hosea, prophecy of, a unique 
book, 97. 

Human nature, not a depraved 
thing, 134-137. 

Human relationships, 252. 

Human volition can modify the 
course of nature, 41, 42. 

Humanism, 228, 229 ; a new cat- 
egory of theological thought, 
xxxvii ; meaning of, xxxix. 

Hume, David, 46 ; failed of fun- 
damental clearness as to the 
theistic argument, xxxix ; defi- 
nition of miracle, 26 ; the 
great perfecter of the old em- 
piricism, 225. 

Ideal, different meanings of the 
word, 260. 

Idealism, 225 ; abstract and 
transcendental, 226. 

Ignorance, a fountain of wrong- 
doing, lx. 



278 



INDEX 



Immanence of God, the, 200- 

202. 
Incarnation of God in man, 

the, lv. 
Infant, an, smile of, 180. 
Influence, intellectual and 

moral, 221. 
Inspiration of the Scriptures, 

XXV. 

Intellect, the limits of, lxx; 
temptation to exclude from 
religion, lxxv ; damage to re- 
ligion from the unfit, lxxvi. 

Intellectual integrity, 61. 

Irving, Edward, 139. 

Isaiah, 72 ; vision of, 93 ; the 
second, 97, 9S. 

Jairus's daughter, 17. 

Jeremiah, prophecy of, 93-95. 

Jesus Christ, Gospel of, essen- 
tially independent of miracle, 
xvii ; his representation of 
the Eternal perspective, xxi ; 
the first emphasis in the mes- 
sage of, xxix ; the soul of, 
xxxi, xxxiv ; the deity of, lv ; 
and Jairus's daughter, 17 ; and 
Saul of Tarsus, 18-22 ; sin- 
lessness of, 23, 24 ; the exam- 
ple of the way, the truth, and 
the life, 8, 9 ; his descent into 
time, 53 ; the historic, 77 ; 
and miracle, 119-107; the 
teaching of, 121-124 ; two- 
fold significance of his char- 
acter, 124-128 ; the tempta- 
tion, 120, 128 ; in Gethsemane, 
180 J birth of, 132-141 ; 
resurrection of, 141-148 ; with 
the apostles, 148, L49; Paul 



our representative believer in, 
148, 153 ; our assurance that 
he is the risen Lord, 162-165 ; 
his fate not bound up with 
that of miracle, 166 ; the one 
adequate assurance of eternal 
love, 176 ; his life serves a 
double end, 182, 183 ; of yes- 
terday, to-day, and to-mor- 
row, 194. 
Joshua, commanding the sun 
and the moon to stand still, 
15. 

Kant, Immanuel, 25; theistic 

argument of, 111, 112. 
Karma, 48. 

Law, the scientific conception 
of, 48, 55, 200, 201; the speech 
of God, 178, 182. 

Lear and Cordelia, 181. 

Life comes from life, 56. 

Liturgies, 213; uses of, xlvii, 
xlviii. 

Living in God, the solution of 
our graver difficulties, 7 ; the 
secret of existence for the 
Christian, 194. 

Logic, validity of laws of, 60 ; 
and dogmatic denial of mira- 
cle, 64. 

Lord's Prayer, the, does not 
mention miracle, 121. 

Lucretius, 40. 

Luther, Martin, 71, 177. 

Macaulay, T. B., 109. 

Man, mind and character of, not 
exempt from law, 57 ; the 
modern, 210; his world. 227, 



INDEX 



279 



228, 251 ; permanent worth 
of, 229, 230; kinship with 
God, 249, 250. 

Marriage, the ideal state, 135- 
137. 

Materialism, 238. 

Maurice, Frederick Denison, 
xxx, 178 ; on miracle, 36, 37. 

Mechanism and spirit, the union 
of, 179-184. 

Mental healing-, 234-237, 257. 

Mill, John Stuart, failed of fun- 
damental clearness as to the 
theistic argument, xxxix; on 
the nature of a miracle, 26, 
27. 

Mind, not exempt from law, 57; 
freedom of, 184, 185. 

Ministry, the Christian, 187- 
189. 

Miracle, Gospel of Jesus Christ 
essentially independent of, 
xvii; relatively unimportant, 
xviii ; not essential to religion, 
4, 5 ; its fortune not identical 
with that of religion, 7 ; tra- 
ditionally assumed to he es- 
sential to Christian faith, 11 ; 
Carlyle on the nature of, 12, 
13 ; complexity of, 13, 14 ; ex- 
amples of, 14-16; classifica- 
tion of, 17 ; the relative, 17, 
25 ; the psychological, 18-24, 
25 ; the real, 24, 25 ; ifume 
and Mill on, 26, 27; Celsus, 
Augustine, and Origen on, 28 ; 
Thomas Aquinas on, 29 ; not 
discussed by Jonathan Ed- 
wards, 29, 30; nor by Bel- 
lamy, 30 ; nor by J. Edwards, 
Jr., and Hopkins, 31 ; and 



but slightly by Emmons, 31, 
and Taylor, 32 ; definitions of, 
by Park, 33 ; Harris and 
Hodge, 35 ; Maurice on, 36, 
37 ; not identical with the su- 
pernatural, 37, 38; does not 
mean that the non-miraculous 
is devoid of the Divine voli- 
tion, 39 ; naturalization of, 42, 
43 ; the educational value of, 
44 ; reality of, always under 
suspicion, 45, 46 ; now ques- 
tioned by profoundly religious 
men, 47, 57, 58 ; attitude of 
scientific men toward, 47, 48 ; 
the fashion of the world's in- 
tellect against, 59; anteced- 
ent improbability of, 6Q ; logi- 
cally possible, but improbable, 
68, 201 ; in the category of 
the unverifiable, 78 ; no part 
of genuine history, 81 ; exist- 
ence of God independent of, 
83; in the Old Testament, 
89-100 ; consciousness of God, 
in the Bible, independent of, 
107 ; historic arguments for 
belief in God exclude, 109, 
110 ; of small concern to the 
true believer in God, 114; 
fortune of, does not involve 
our faith in God, 118 ; and 
Jesus Christ, 119-167; no 
mention of, in the Lord's 
Prayer, 121 ; fate of, does not 
involve that of Jesus, 166 ; and 
the Christian life, 168-207; 
does not belong to our gener- 
ation, 171 ; the natural se- 
quence of the transcendental 
conception of God, 202. 



280 



INDEX 



Miraculous, the, and the me- 
chanical, 83, 84. 

Miraculous universe, a, 189, 190. 

Money, the chief concern of the 
business world, 233. 

Moral government of the 
world, 4. 

Moral ideal, the denial of, 254- 
266; genesis of the denial, 
25S ; in man's life, 269, 270. 

Morality, too much a question 
of etiquette and diplomacy, 
231. 

Moses, miracles of, 14, 15. 

Mulford, Elisha, 258. 

Miinsterberg, Hugo, on the 
Eternal Values, 246. 

Mystics, the, 118. 

Natural, the, and the supernat- 
ural, xvii. 

Natural law, slight or profound 
sense of, 66, 67 ; the speech of 
God, 178, 179, 182. 

Naturalism, 228. 

Nature, and religion, 10 ; inva- 
riable order in, 49, 50 ; idea 
of fixed order in, an assump- 
tion, 54 ; value of the scientific 
conception of, 61 ; uniformity 
of, a reasonable assumption, 
63, 64, 66 ; belief in the flexi- 
bility of, GG, 67 ; order of, the 
speech of God, 178. 

Nature miracles, 24. 

New England theology, lvi, lvii. 

New Testamont, strength of, the 
assurance that Jesus is alive, 
164. 

Newman, Francis W., story of, 



Newman, John Henry, X3 

177. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 52. 
Nicias, high resolve of, 24S. 



, 5, 



Objectivity of thought, 268. 

(Edipus and Antigone, 181. 

Old Testament, the, greatest 
things in, are isolated from 
miracle, 89-100. 

Omar Khayyam, 49. 

Order, invariable, in nature, 49, 
50; scientific conception of, 51 ; 
idea of, an assumption, 54; 
essential to mind, 62, 85 ; the 
foundation of science, 86; of 
nature, the speech of God, 
179. 

Origen, 28, 176 ; on the author- 
ship of the Epistle to the He- 
brews, 71. 

Originality, in theological 
thought, xxxv ; objective, 
xxxvi ; f ruitf ulness of, xl ; 
means greater depth of ap- 
prehension, xli; the widest 
opportunity for, xliv. 

Orthodoxy, the traditional, 73. 

Paley, William, 109. 

Parenthood, sanctity of, 136- 
138. 

Park, Edwards A., cited, 33, 34, 
68, 54. 

Paul, the apostle, recognized de- 
grees of importance among 
the higher forces of faith, 
xviii ; changed the perspective 
of his life, xxiv ; his vision of 
Jesus, 19-22; and predesti- 
nation, 50; and imperial 



INDEX 



281 



Christianity, 76; his con- 
sciousness of God, 102, 103; 
the great witness for the risen 
Christ, 148, 153 ; the temporal 
note absent from his experi- 
ence, 152 ; address before 
Agrippa, 153, 154 ; his vision 

, of Jesus, 153-156; influence 
of the vision, 157, 158, 161 ; 
his sufferings, 159; his per- 
sonality, 160; chief signifi- 
cance of his faith, 175. 

Perspective, of faith, xix, xxv ; 
of God, xxi ; rules the lives of 
men, xxii; how determined, 
xxiii, xxiv. 

Perversity, a fountain of moral 
evil, lx. 

Peter, and the resurrection of 
Jesus, 147, 148. 

Phenomenalism, pure, 224. 

Plato, his Idea, xxxviii ; story 
of the ring of Gyges, 120 ; the 
closing chapter of his " Phse- 
do," 251. 

Prayer, 213 ; a form of imme- 
diate contact with God, xlvii ; 
a dialogue of the soul with 
God, xlviii. 

Preacher, task of the, 223 ; and 
the healing- cult, 235. 

Predestination, 50; not proved 
by induction, 51. 

Private judgment, the right of, 
xliv, xlv. 

Probability, the guide to life in 
historical investigation, 71. 

Progress, persistent opposition 
essential to, 61. 

Prophets, the Hebrew, 92-98. 

Psalms, the, 99, 100. 



Quakers, the inner light of the, 
118. 

Rainbow, the, God's covenant of 
order in nature, 87, 88. 

Rational, the, not the real, 
lxxiv. 

Real, the, and the rational, not 
the same, lxxiv. 

Reality, the great demand of 
the vexed soul, lxix, lxx. 

Relativity, the law of our 
being, xix, xxiii. 

Religion, generates a just per- 
spective, xxiv ; beginning of, 
xxiv, xxv ; new insights in, 
xxxvi, xl ; second-hand, xlvi : 
must provide a way of escape 
for us, lxii ; its sovereign 
word is now, lxxiii; tempta- 
tion to exclude the intellect 
from, lxxv ; damage to, from 
the unfit intellect, lxxvi ; in- 
dependent of miracle, 4, 5, 
203 ; its fortune not identified 
with that of miracle, 7 ; the 
genius of, 7 ; relation to other 
human interests and to nature, 
10 ; none without God, 82 ; 
an historic phenomenon, 208 ; 
its greatest exemplars and 
masterpieces in the past, 211 ; 
primarily an affair of exalted 
being, 212; the custom of, 
213-214; the modern man 
not original in, 216; revival 
of, 217 ; the teacher of, 223 ; as 
a therapeutic agent, 234-237 ; 
warfare of sects, 239, 240; 
the philosophy of, 253, 256 ; 
called a tangle of errors and 



282 



INDEX 



superstitions, 261, 262; its 
order of experimentation, 268, 
269; cannot endure without 
conscience, 270. 

Resurrection, the, 141, 148. 

Revival of religion, naturally 
desired, 217. 

Revivalism, professional, 218. 

Royce, Josiah, cited, liii, liv. 

Ruth and Naomi, 180, 181. 

Salvation, the way of, lix-lxvi. 

Santayana, George, his " Life 
of Reason " cited, 225. 

Saul of Tarsus, conversion of, 
18-22. 

Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 178 ; 
our debt to, 113, 114. 

Scholar, the work of, 209, 210, 
214, 216. 

Science, the method of, 51, 52 ; 
human, strictly contempora- 
neous, 60. 

Sects, warfare of, 239, 240. 

Sex instinct, the, 256, 257. 

Sin, the sense of, 269. 

Smile, the, of an infant, 180. 

Smith, W. Robertson, 258. 

Socrates, Greek philosophy an 
enigma without, 76 ; his ar- 
gument for the existence of 
God, 108, 109; confronting 
death, 241. 

Soul, the Eternal, xxix ; of Jesus 
Christ, xxxi ; everywhere the 
reality and the end, xxxiv, 
lxxiii. 

Souls, the substance of the uni- 
verse, xxix, xxxii ; of men, 
Jesus' emphasis on, xxxi, 
/li-xxxiv ; kinship and con- 



tinuity of, xl ; intercommuni- 
cation between, 22. 

Spencer, Herbert, 49. 

Spinoza, Baruch, 46, 49, 113. 

Spirit, demonstration of the, 
lxvi-lxxviii ; defined, lxvii, 
236, 237 ; union of mechanism 
and, 179-184 ; what is, 236, 
237. 

Stephen, the martyr, 251. 

Subjectivity of thought, 268. 

Supernatural, the, pervades the 
natural, xvii ; not identical 
with miracle, 37, though es- 
sential to it, 38. 

Taylor, Nathaniel W., a great 
figure in New England theo- 
logy, 1-5 ; no attention paid 
to miracle in the writings of, 
32, 33. 

Temporal, the, 101. 

Theistic argument, the confu- 
sion of, xxxviii. 

"Theologia Germanica," 118. 

Theological ideas, traditional, 
li ; strength of, lxiii. 

Theological thought, originality 
in, xxxv-1 ; humanism, a new 
category of, xxxvii. 

Theology, historic, liii ; New 
England, lvi, Ivii ; a great and 
difficult science, 2. 

Things worth while, xvii- 
lxxviii. 

Thomson, James, his " City of 
Dreadful Night," 49. 

Thought, objective and subject- 
ive, 268. 

Transubstantiation, chief objec- 
tion to, 231. 



INDEX 



283 



Trinitarianism, and Unitarian- 
ism, xxx. 

Trinity, the, liii, liv. 

Truth, our object as thinkers, 
lviii. 

Uniformity of nature, the, a rea- 
sonable assumption, 63, 64, 6Q. 

Unitarianism, and Trinitarian- 
ism, xxx. 

Unity, professional architects 
of, 220. 

Universe, the, modern concep- 
tion of, 48 ; a miraculous, 189, 
190. 

Unverifiable, the, not necessa- 
rily untrue, 70; belief ex- 
tends far into the region of, 
72 ; not an essential part of a 
reasonable faith, 73; miracle 
belongs in category of, 77. 



Verifiable, the, belief not lim- 
ited to, 71, 72 ; includes what 
is sure and mighty in Chris- 
tian faith, 79. 

Verification, made by the liv- 
ing, 28 ; some things not open 
to, 69, 70, 79. 

Virgin birth, the, 132-141. 

Webster, Daniel, quoted, lxix. 
Wisdom-literature of Israel, 

without miracle, 91. 
World, a society of persons, 

xxix ; the external, reality of, 

144, 145. 

Xenophanes, quoted, xxxviii. 
Yale University, 1. 
Zeno and Calvin, 50. 



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